MR.  WINTHROFS  ADDRESS 


BEFORE    THE 


NEW    ENGLAND    SOCIETY, 


IN    THE 


CITY    OF    NEW    YORK, 


December  23,  1839. 


AN 


ADDRESS, 


DELIVERED    BEFORE    THE 


NEW    ENGLAND    SOCIETY, 


CITY    OF    NEW    YORK, 


DECEMBER  23,  1839. 


BY  ROBERT  C.  WINTHROP. 


BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED    BY    PERKINS    &    MARVIN. 

NEW  YORK: 

GOULD,    NEWMAN    &    SAXTON. 

1840. 


New  York,  Dec.  31,  1839- 
Sir, 

In  bohftlf  of  the  New  Esoland  Societv  in  the  City  of  New  York,  and  by  their 
direction,  it  gives  us  mucli  satisfaction  to  express  to  you  their  unfeigned  thanks  for  the  Ora- 
tion pronounced  by  you,  at  their  solicitation,  in  the  Broadway  Tabernacle  in  this  City,  on 
the  23d  inst.,  upon  tlie  occasion  of  their  public  remembrance  of  the  Anniversary  of  the 
'Landing  of  the  Pilgrims  at  Plymouth'  in  1G20  ;  an  Address,  which,  in  the  principles  it 
recommended,  and,  in  the  historic  research  and  statesmanlike  views  it  disclosed,  was  so 
entirely  worthy  of  the  family  name  you  bear ;  and  one  which,  in  the  eloquence  and  power 
with  which  it  took  possession  of  the  mind  of  the  hearer,  gave  full  proof  that  the  City  of 
Boston,  in  its  public  epeakers  and  leading  minds,  had  not  fallen  away  from  the  '  Town  of 
Boston'  of  earlier  days,  and  dearer  associations.  The  Society  earnestly  request  a  copy  for 
publication. 

With  great  respect,  we  are 

Your  friends  and  servants, 

JOSEPH  HOXIE, 

THOMAS  FESSENDEN,.    „ 

J.  PRESCOTT  HALL,     ^  Comrmttee, 


EDWARD  S.  GOULD, 


Robert  C.  Wikthrof,  Es<i, 


Boston,  Jakuarv  10,  1840. 
Gentlemen, 

I  am  deeply  indebted  to  the  New  E:?gland  Societt  in  the  City  of  New  York,  for 
the  favor  with  which  they  received  my  Address  on  the  23d  ult.,  and  to  yourselves  for  the 
flattering  terms  in  which  you  have  requested  a  copy  for  the  press.  I  have  no  hope  that,  on 
perusal,  it  will  answer  the  expectations  which  such  terms  and  such  a  reception  would  seem 
to  justify  ; — but  I  cannot  refuse  to  submit  it  to  your  disposal. 
I  am,  very  respectfully. 

Your  obedient  servant  and  friend, 

ROBERT  C.  WINTHROP. 
Joseph  Hoxie,  Esq.,  and  others,  Committee,  &c. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1840, 

By  Perkins  &  Marvin, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 


LIBRARY 


ADDRESS. 


Towards  the  close  of  the  year  1558,  about 
281  years  ago,  a  little  more  than  nine  times  the 
period  which  has  been  commonly  assigned  as  the 
term  of  a  generation,  and  only  four  times  the  three 
score  years  and  ten  which  have  been  Divinely 
allotted  to  the  life  of  man,  a  Virgin  Princess 
ascended  the  throne  of  England.  Inheriting,  to- 
gether with  the  throne  itself,  a  full  measure  of  that 
haughty  and  overbearing  spirit  which  characterized 
the  Royal  race  from  which  she  sprang,  she  could 
not  brook  the  idea  of  any  partition  of  her  power, 
or  any  control  over  her  person.  She  seemed  re- 
solved that  that  race  should  end  with  her,  and  that 
the  crown  which  it  had  so  nobly  won  on  Bosworth 
Field  should  seek  a  new  channel  of  succession, 
rather  than  it  should  be  deprived,  in  her  person 
and  through  any  accident  of  her  sex,  of  one  jot 
or  tittle  of  that  high  prerogative,  which  it  had  now 
enjoyed  for  nearly  a  century.  She  seemed  to 
prefer,  not  only  to  hold,  herself,  a  barren  sceptre — 
no  heir  of  her's  succeedins; — but  even  to  let  that 
sceptre  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  issue  of  a  hated, 


4 

persecuted,  and  finally  murdered  rival,  rather  than 
risk  the  certainty  of  wielding  it  herself,  with  that 
free  and  unembarrassed  arm  which  befitted  a 
daughter  of  the  Tudors. 

Accordingly,  no  sooner  had  she  grasped  it,  and 
seated  herself  securely  upon  the  throne  of  her 
Fathers,  than  she  declared  to  her  suppliant  Com- 
mons— who  doubtless  presumed  that  they  could 
approach  a  Queen  of  almost  six-and-twenty,  with 
no  more  agreeable  petition,  than  that  she  would 
graciously  condescend  to  select  for  herself  an  help 
meet  for  her  in  the  management  of  the  mighty 
interests  which  had  just  been  intrusted  to  her  — 
that  England  was  her  husband ;  that  she  had 
wedded  it  with  the  marriage  ring  upon  her  finger, 
placed  there  by  herself  with  that  design  on  the 
very  morning  of  her  coronation ;  that  while  a 
private  person  she  had  always  declined  a  matri- 
monial engagement,  regarding  it  even  then  as  an 
incumbrance,  but  that  much  more  did  she  persist 
in  this  opinion  now  that  a  great  Kingdom  had 
been  committed  to  her  charge  ;  and  that,  for  one, 
she  wished  no  higher  character  or  fairer  remem- 
brance of  her  should  be  transmitted  to  posterity, 
when  she  should  pay  the  last  debt  to  Nature,  than 
to  have  this  inscription  engraved  on  her  tomb- 
stone— '  Here  lies  Elizabeth,  who  lived  and  died 
a  Maiden  Queen.' 

In  the  purpose  thus  emphatically  declared  at  her 
accession,  the  Queen  of  whom  I  speak  persevered 
to  her  decease.     Scorning  the  proverbial  privilege 


of  her  sex  to  change  their  minds  at  will  upon 
such  a  subject,  and  resisting  the  importunities  of 
a  thousand  suitors,  she  realized  that  vision  of  a 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  which  was  so  ex- 
quisitely unfolded  to  her  by  the  immortal  Dramatist 
of  her  day  : 

'  I  saw 
Flying  between  the  cold  moon  and  the  earth 
Cupid  all-armed :  a  certain  aim  he  took 
At  a  fair  Vestal,  throned  by  the  West, 
And  loosed  his  love-shaft  smartly  from  his  bow 
As  it  should  pierce  a  hundred  thousand  hearts ; — 
But  I  might  see  young  Cupid's  fiery  shaft 
Q,uenched  in  the  chaste  beams  of  the  watery  moon ; 
And  the  imperial  votress  passed  on, 
In  maiden  meditation,  fancy-free. ' 

But  Elizabeth  was  not  quite  content  to  wait  for 
a  tombstone,  on  which  to  inscribe  this  purpose  and 
its  fulfillment.  Proclaimed,  as  it  annually  was, 
through  the  whole  length  and  breadth  of  the  Old 
World,  from  almost  every  corner  of  which  proposals 
of  a  character  to  shake  and  change  it,  were  con- 
tinually poured  in  upon  her, — she  resolved  to  en- 
grave it  once  and  for  ever  upon  the  New  World 
also,  where  as  yet  there  was  no  civilized  suitor  to 
teaze  her  with  his  pretensions,  whose  very  existence 
had  been  discovered  less  than  a  century  before  by 
Christopher  Columbus,  and  the  Northern  Continent 
of  which  had  been  brought  within  the  reach  of  her 
own  prerogative  by  the  subsequent  discovery  of 
Sebastian  Cabot.  To  that  whole  Continent  she 
gave    the  name  of  Virginia  ;    and  at    her  death. 


after  a  reign  of  five-and-forty  years,  that  whole 
Continent,  through  all  its  yet  unmeasured  latitudes 
and  longitudes,  from  the  confines  of  Labrador  to 
the  Mexican  Gulf,  was  known  by  no  other  title, 
than  that  which  thus  marked  it  as  the  dominion 
of  a  Maiden  Queen. 

But  it  was  that  Queen's  dominion  only  in  name. 
Four  times,  indeed,  she  had  essayed  to  people  it 
and  plant  her  banners  there.  But  in  vain.  Sir 
Humphrey  Gilbert,  to  whom  the  first  patent  for 
this  purpose  was  granted,  being  compelled  to  return 
prematurely  to  England  by  the  disasters  he  had 
experienced  on  the  coast  of  Newfoundland,  was 
lost  in  a  storm  on  the  homeward  passage,  and  all 
that  survived  of  his  gallant  enterprise,  was  that 
sublime  exclamation,  as  he  sat  in  the  stern  of  his 
sinking  bark — '  It  is  as  near  to  Heaven  by  sea  as 
by  land.' — By  the  resolute  and  undaunted  efforts 
of  his  illustrious  brother-in-law,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh, 
however,  three  separate  companies  of  Colonists 
were  afterwards  conducted  to  the  more  Southern 
parts  of  the  Continent,  and  each  in  succession 
commenced  a  settlement  at  Roanoake  Bay.  But 
two  of  them  perished  on  the  spot,  without  leaving 
behind  them  even  so  much  as  the  means  of  ascer- 
taining whether  they  had  owed  their  destruction 
to  force  or  to  famine ; — while  the  third,  which, 
indeed,  was  the  first  in  order,  within  a  year  from 
its  departure,  returned  in  disgust  to  its  native  land. 
And  the  whole  result  of  Virginia  Colonization  and 
Virginia   Commerce,  upon  which  such   unbounded 


hopes  of  g\ory  and  of  gain  had  been  hung  by 
Raleigh  and  cherished  by  the  Queen,  had  hitherto 
consisted  in  the  introduction  into  England,  by  this 
last  named  band  of  emigrants  returning  home  in 
despair,  of  a  few  hundreds  of  tobacco,  and  in  Queen 
Elizabeth  herself  becoming  one  of  Raleigh's  pupils 
in  that  most  maidenly  and  most  Queenly  accom- 
plishment— smoking  a  pipe.  Not  one  subject  did 
Elizabeth  leave  at  her  death  in  that  wide  spread 
Continent,  which  she  had  thus  destined  to  the  honor 
of  perpetuating  the  memory  of  her  haughty  and 
ambitious  virginity. 

Within  a  year  or  two  past,  a  second  Maiden 
Queen  has  ascended  the  throne  which  the  first 
exchanged  for  a  grave  in  1603.  And  when  she 
casts  her  eye  back,  as  she  can  scarcely  fail  fre- 
quently to  do,  to  the  days  of  her  illustrious  proto- 
type, and  compares  the  sceptre  which  Elizabeth 
so  boldly  swayed  for  nearly  half  a  century  with 
that  which  trembles  in  her  girlish  hand,  she  may 
console  herself  with  the  reflection,  that  if  the 
strength  and  potency  of  her  own  are  greatly  in- 
ferior, its  reach  and  sweep  are,  practically  at  least, 
vastly  more  extended.  She  sees  the  immediate 
successor  to  Elizabeth,  uniting  the  crowns  of  Eng- 
land and  Scotland,  and  preparing  the  way  for  that 
perfect  consolidation  of  the  two  Countries  which 
another  Century  was  destined  to  complete.  Ire- 
land, too,  she  finds  no  longer  held  by  the  tenure 
of  an  almost  annual  conquest,  but  included  in  the 
bonds  of  the  same  great   Union.     While   beyond 


8 

the  boundaries  of  the  Imperial  Homestead,  she 
beholds  her  Power  bestridhig  the  World  like  a 
Colossus,  a  foot  on  either  Hemisphere — in  one, 
military  posts  and  colonial  possessions  hailing  her 
accession  and  acknowledging  her  sway,  which  were 
without  even  a  name  or  local  habitation  in  the 
history  of  the  World  as  Raleigh  wrote  it — and 
in  the  other,  a  Company  of  Adventurers  which 
Elizabeth  chartered  a  few  years  before  her  death, 
to  try  the  experiment  of  a  trade  with  the  East 
Indies  by  the  newly  discovered  passage  round  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope,  converted  from  a  petty  Mer- 
cantile Corporation  into  a  vast  Military  Empire, 
and  holding  in  her  name  and  expending  in  her 
service  territorial  dominions  and  revenues  equal  to 
those  of  the  most  powerful  Independent  Monarchies. 
But  where  is  Virginia?  Where  is  the  'ancient 
dominion '  upon  which  her  great  Exemplar  in- 
scribed the  substance  of  that  '  maiden  meditation  ' 
which  even  now,  mayhap,  is  mingled  with  the 
weightier  cares  of  majesty  in  her  own  breast  ? 
Have  all  attempts  to  plant  and  colonize  it  proved 
still  unsuccessful  ?  Is  it  still  unreclaimed  from 
original  barbarism, — still  only  the  abode  of  wolves 
and  wild  men  ?  And  why  is  it  not  found  on  the 
map  of  the  British  possessions — why  not  comprised 
in  the  catalogue  of  Her  Majesty's  Colonies  ?  Two 
centuries  and  a  third  ago  only,  when  Elizabeth 
quitted  the  throne,  it  was  there,  unsettled  indeed 
and  with  not  a  civilized  soul  upon  its  soil,  but 
opening  its  boundless  territories  to   the  adventure 


and  enterprise  of  the  British  People,  and  destined 
to  all  human  appearances  to  be  one  day  counted 
among  the  brightest  jewels  in  the  crowns  of  the 
British  Princes.  Why  is  it  not  now  seen  sparkling 
in  that  which  encircles  her  brow  ? 

If  we  might  imagine  the  youthful  Victoria,  led 
along  by  the  train  of  reflections  which  w'e  have 
thus  suggested,  and  snatching  a  moment  from  the 
anxious  contemplation  of  Colonies  which  she  is  in 
immediate  danger  of  losing,  to  search  after  those 
which  have  been  lost  to  her  already, — if  we  might 
imagine  her  turning  back  the  page  of  History  to 
the  period  of  the  first  Stuart,  to  discover  what 
became  of  the  Virginia  of  Elizabeth  after  her  death, 
how  it  was  finally  planted,  and  how  it  passed  from 
beneath  the  sceptre  of  her  successors, — if  we  might 
be  indulged  in  a  far  less  natural  imagination,  and 
fancy  ourselves  admitted  at  this  moment  to  the 
Royal  presence,  and,  with  something  more  even 
than  the  ordinary  boldness  of  Yankee  curiosity, 
peering  over  the  Royal  shoulder,  as,  impatient  at 
the  remembrance  of  losses  sustained  and  still  more 
so  at  the  prospect  of  like  losses  impending,  she 
hurries  over  the  leaves  on  which  the  fortunes  of 
that  Virginia  are  recorded,  and  the  fortunes  of  all 
other  Virginias  foreshadowed, — what  a  scene  should 
we  find  unfolding  itself  to  her  view! 

She  sees,  at  a  glance,  a  permanent  settlement 
effected  there,  and  James  the  First,  more  fortunate 
than  his  mother's  murderer,  inscribing  a  name  not 
on   a   mere   empty  Territory  only,  but   on  an  or- 

2 


10 

ganized  nnd  inhabited  Town.  A  page  onward, 
she  perceives  a  second  and  entirely  separate  settle- 
ment accomplished  in  a  widely  distant  quarter  of 
the  Continent,  and  the  cherished  title  of  New 
England  is  now  presented  to  her  view.  Around 
these  two  original  footholds  of  civilization,  she  sees 
a  hardy,  enterprising  and  chivalrous  people  rapidly 
clustering,  while  other  settlements  are  simulta- 
neously established  along  the  territory  which  divides 
them.  Thousands  of  miles  of  coast,  with  their 
parallel  ranges  of  interior  Country,  are  soon  seen 
thickly  studded  over  with  populous  and  flourishing 
plantations.  The  population  of  them  all,  which 
had  run  up  from  0  to  300,000  by  the  close  of  the 
17th  century,  is  found  advanced  to  more  than  two 
millions  by  the  close  of  the  18th.  And  another 
page  displays  to  her  kindling  gaze  thirteen  as  noble 
Colonies  as  the  Sun  ever  shone  upon,  with  nearly 
three  millions  of  inhabitants,  all  acknowledging 
their  allegiance  to  the  British  Crown,  all  con- 
tributing their  unmatched  energies  to  the  support 
and  extension  of  the  British  Commerce,  and  all 
claiming,  as  their  most  valued  birthright,  the  liberties 
and  immunities  of  the  British  Constitution.  Ah ! 
did  the  volume  but  end  there!  But  she  perceives, 
as  she  proceeds,  that  in  a  rash  hour  those  liberties 
and  immunities  were  denied  them.  Resistance, 
War,  Independence,  in  letters  of  blood  now  start 
up  bewilderingly  to  her  sight.  And  where  the 
Virginia  of  Elizabeth  was,  two  centuries  and  a 
third  ago,  a  waste   and    howling  wilderness   upon 


11 

which  civilized  man  was  as  yet  unable  to  maintain 
himself  a  moment — she  next  beholds  an  Independent 
and  United  Nation  of  sixteen  millions  of  Freemen, 
with  a  Commerce  second  only  to  her  own,  and 
with  a  Country,  a  Constitution,  an  entire  condition 
of  men  and  things,  which  from  all  previous  ex- 
perience in  the  growth  of  Nations,  ought  to  have 
been  the  fruit  of  at  least  a  thousand  years,  and 
would  have  been  regarded  as  the  thrifty  produce 
of  a  Millennium  well  employed  ! 

Gentlemen  of  the  New  England  Society  and 
Fellow  Citizens  of  New  York,  of  this  wonderful 
rise  and  progress  of  our  Country,  from  the  merely 
nominal  and  embryo  existence  which  it  had  ac- 
quired at  the  dawn  of  the  17th  Century,  to  the 
mature  growth,  the  substantial  prosperity,  the  in- 
dependent greatness  and  National  grandeur  in  which 
it  is  now  beheld,  we  this  day  commemorate  a  main, 
original  spring.  The  22d  of  December,  1620,  was 
not  the  mere  birthday  of  a  Town  or  a  Colony. 
Had  it  depended  for  its  distinction  upon  events 
like  these,  it  would  have  long  ago  ceased  to  be 
memorable.  The  Town  which  it  saw  planted,  is 
indeed  still  in  existence,  standing  on  the  very  site 
which  the  Pilgrims  selected,  and  containing  within 
its  limits  an  honest,  industrious  and  virtuous  people, 
not  unworthy  of  the  precious  scenes  and  hallowed 
associations  to  whose  enjoyment  they  have  suc- 
ceeded. But  possessing,  as  it  did  originally,  no 
peculiar  advantages  either  of  soil,  locality  or  climate, 


12 

and  outstripped,  as  it  naturally  has  been,  in  wealth, 
size,  population  and  importance,  by  thousands  of 
other  Towns  all  over  the  Continent,  it  would 
scarcely  suffice  to  perpetuate  beyond  its  own  im- 
mediate precincts,  the  observance,  or  even  the 
remembrance  of  a  day,  of  whose  doings  it  con- 
stitiited  the  only  monument ;  while  the  Colony 
of  whose  establishment  that  day  was  also  the  com- 
mencement, has  long  since  ceased  to  enjoy  any 
separate  political  existence.  As  if  to  rescue  its 
Founders  from  the  undeserved  fortune  of  being 
only  associated  in  the  memory  of  posterity  with 
the  settlers  of  individual  States,  and  to  insure  for 
them  a  name  and  a  praise  in  all  quarters  of  the 
Country,  the  Colony  of  New  Plymouth  never 
reached  the  dignity  of  Independent  Sovereignty  to 
which  almost  all  its  sister  Colonies  were  destined, 
and  is  now  known  only  as  the  fraction  of  a  County 
of  a  Commonwealth  which  was  founded  by  other 
hands. 

Yes,  the  event  which  occurred  two  hundred  and 
nineteen  years  ago  yesterday,  was  of  wider  import 
than  the  confines  of  New  Plymouth.  The  area  of 
New  England,  greater  than  that  of  Old  England, 
has  yet  proved  far  too  contracted  to  comprehend  all 
its  influences.  They  have  been  coextensive  with 
our  country.  They  have  pervaded  our  Continent. 
They  have  passed  the  Isthmus.  They  have  climbed 
the  farthest  Andes.  They  have  crossed  the  Ocean. 
The  seeds  of  the  Mayflower,  wafted  by  the  winds 
of  Heaven,  or  borne  in  the  Eagle's  beak,  have  been 


13 

scattered  far  and  wide  over  the  Old  world  as  well 
as  over  the  New.  The  suns  of  France  or  Italy 
have  not  scorched  them.  The  frosts  of  Russia 
have  not  nipped  them.  The  fogs  of  Germany  have 
not  blighted  them.  They  have  sprung  up  in  every 
latitude,  and  borne  fruit,  some  twenty,  some  fifty, 
and  some  an  hundred  fold.  And  though  so  often 
struck  down  and  crushed  beneath  the  iron  tread  of 
arbitrary  Power,  they  are  still  ineradicably  imbed- 
ded in  every  soil,  and  their  leaves  are  still  destined 
to  be  for  the  healing  of  all  Nations.  Oh,  could  only 
some  one  of  the  pious  Fathers  whose  wanderings 
were  this  day  brought  to  an  end,  be  permitted  to 
enter  once  more  upon  these  earthly  scenes ;  could 
he,  like  the  pious  Father  of  ancient  Rome,  guided 
by  some  guardian  spirit  and  covered  with  a  cloud, 
be  conducted,  I  care  not  to  what  spot  beneath  the 
sky,  how  might  he  exclaim,  as  he  gazed,  not  with 
tears  of  anguish  but  of  rapture,  not  on  some  empty 
picture  of  Pilgrim  sorrows  and  Pilgrim  struggles, 
but  upon  the  living  realities  of  Pilgrim  influence 
and  Pilgrim  achievement — '  Quis  locus — Qu(c  regio 
— What  place,  what  region  upon  earth  is  there,  which 
is  not  full  of  the  products  of  our  labors  !  Where, 
where,  has  not  some  darkness  been  enlightened, 
some  oppression  alleviated,  some  yoke  broken  or 
chain  loosened,  some  better  views  of  God's  worship 
or  man's  duty,  of  Divine  Law  or  human  rights, 
been  imparted  by  our  principles  or  inspired  by  our 
example  I' 

This  Country,  Fellow  Citizens,  has  in  no  respect 


14 

more  entirely  contravened  all  previous  experience 
in  human  affairs,  than  in  affording  materials  for 
the  minutest  details  in  the  history  of  its  earliest 
ages.  I  should  rather  say,  of  its  earliest  days, 
for  it  has  had  no  ages,  and  days  have  done  for  it, 
what  ages  have  been  demanded  for  elsewhere. 
But,  whatever  the  periods  of  its  existence  may  be 
termed,  they  are  all  historical  periods.  Its  whole 
birth,  growth,  being,  are  before  us.  We  are  not 
compelled  to  resort  to  cunningly  devised  fables  to 
account  either  for  its  origin  or  advancement.  We 
can  trace  back  the  current  of  its  career  to  the  very 
rock  from  which  it  first  gushed. 

Yet  how  like  a  fable  does  it  seem,  how  even 
*  stranger  than  fiction,'  to  speak  of  the  event  which 
we  this  day  commemorate,  as  having  exerted  any 
material  influence  on  the  destinies  of  our  Country, 
much  more  as  having  in  any  degree  affected  the  ex- 
isting condition  of  the  world  !  This  ever-memorable, 
ever-glorious  landing  of  the  Pilgrims,  how,  where, 
by  what  numbers,  under  what  circumstances  was  it 
made  ?  From  what  invincible  Armada  did  the 
Fathers  of  New  England  disembark  ?  With  what 
array  of  disciplined  armies  did  they  line  the  shore  ? 
Warned  by  the  fate  which  had  so  frequently  be- 
fallen other  Colonists  on  the  same  Coast,  what 
batteries  did  they  bring  to  defend  them  from  the 
incursions  of  a  merciless  foe,  what  stores  to  preserve 
them  from  the  invasions  of  a  not  more  merciful 
famine  ? 

In  the  whole  history  of  Colonization,  ancient  or 


15 

modern,  no  feebler  Company,  either  in  point  of 
numbers,  armament,  or  supplies,  can  be  found,  than 
that  which  landed,  on  the  day  we  commemorate, 
on  these  American  shores.  Forty-one  men, — of 
whom  two,  at  least,  came  over  only  in  the  capacity 
of  servants  to  others,  and  who  manifested  their  title 
to  be  counted  among  the  Fathers  of  New  England 
within  a  tew  weeks  after  their  arrival,  by  fighting 
with  sword  and  dagger  the  first  Duel  which  stands 
recorded  on  the  annals  of  the  New  World,  for  which 
they  were  adjudged  to  be  tied  together  neck  and 
heels  and  so  to  lie  for  four  and  twenty  hours  with- 
out meat  or  drink — forty-one  men, — of  whom  one 
more,  at  least,  had  been  shuffled  into  the  ship's 
company  at  London,  nobody  knew  by  whom,  and 
who  even  more  signally  vindicated  his  claim  no  long 
time  after,  to  be  enumerated  among  this  pious.  Pil- 
grim Band,  by  committing  the  first  murder  and 
gracing  the  first  gallows  of  which  there  is  any 
memorial  in  our  Colonial  History — forty-one  men, 
all  told, — with  about  sixty  women  and  children, 
one  of  whom  had  been  born  during  the  passage  and 
another  in  the  harbor  before  they  landed, — in  a 
single  ship,  of  only  one  hundred  and  eighty  tons 
burthen,  whose  upper  works  had  proved  so  leaky, 
and  whose  middle  beam  had  been  so  bowed  and 
wracked  by  the  cross  winds  and  fierce  storms  which 
they  encountered  during  the  first  half  of  the  voyage, 
that  but  for  '  a  great  iron  screw '  which  one  of  the 
passengers  had  brought  with  him  from  Holland  and 
by  which  they  were  enabled  to  raise  the  beam  into 


16 

its  place  again,  they  must  have  turned  back  in 
despair — conducted,  after  a  four  months'  passage 
upon  the  Ocean,  either  by  the  ignorance  or  the 
treachery  of  their  Pilot,  to  a  Coast  widely  different 
from  that  which  they  had  themselves  selected,  and 
entirely  out  of  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Corporation 
from  which  they  had  obtained  their  Charter — and 
landing  at  last, — after  a  four  weeks'  search  along 
the  shore  for  a  harbor  in  which  they  could  land  at 
all, — at  one  moment  wearied  out  with  wading  above 
their  knees  in  the  icy  surf,  at  another  tired  with 
travelling  up  and  down  the  steep  hills  and  valleys 
covered  with  snow,  at  a  third,  dashed  upon  the 
breakers  in  a  foundering  shallop  whose  sails,  masts, 
rudder,  had  been  successively  carried  away  in  a 
squall,  with  the  spray  of  the  sea  frozen  on  them 
until  their  clothes  looked  as  if  they  were  glazed 
and  felt  like  coats  of  iron,  and  having  in  all  their 
search  seen  little  else  but  graves,  and  received  no 
other  welcome  but  a  shout  of  savages  and  a  shower 
of  arrows — landing  at  last,  with  a  scanty  supply  of 
provisions  for  immediate  use,  and  with  ten  bushels 
of  corn  for  planting  in  the  ensuing  spring,  which 
they  had  dug  out  of  the  sand-hills  where  the  Indians 
had  hidden  it,  and  without  which  they  would  have 
been  in  danger  of  perishing,  but  for  which,  it  is 
carefully  recorded,  they  gave  the  owners  entire 
content  about  six  months  after — landing  at  last,  in 
the  depth  of  winter,  with  grievous  colds  and  coughs 
and  the  seeds  of  those  illnesses  which  quickly 
proved  the  death  of  many — upon  a  bleak  and  storm- 


17 

beaten  Rock, — a  fit  emblem  of  most  of  the  soil  by 
whicii  it  was  surrounded — (his,  this,  is  a  plain,  un- 
varnished story  of  that  day's  transaction, — this  was 
the  triumphal  entry  of  the  New  Eno;land  Fathers 
upon  tiie  theatre  of  their  glory  ! — What  has  saved 
it  from  being  the  theme  of  ridicule  and  contempt  ? 
What  has  rescued  it  from  being  handed  down 
through  all  history,  as  a  wretched  effort  to  compass 
a  mighty  end  by  paltry  and  utterly  inadequate 
means  ?  What  has  screened  it  from  being  stigma- 
tized forever  as  a  Quixotic  sally  of  wild  and  hare- 
brained enthusiasts  ? 

Follow  this  feeble,  devoted  band,  to  the  spot 
which  they  have  at  length  selected  for  their  habita- 
tion. See  them  felling  a  few  trees,  sawing  and 
carrying  the  timber,  and  building  the  first  New 
England  house,  of  about  twenty  feet  square,  to 
receive  them  and  their  g^oods — and  see  that  house, 
the  earliest  product  of  their  exhausted  energies, 
within  a  fortnight  after  it  was  finished,  and  on  the 
very  morning  it  was  for  the  first  time  to  have  been 
the  scene  of  their  wilderness  worship,  burnt  in  an 
instant  to  the  ground. 

They  have  chosen  a  Governor — one  whom  of  all 
others  they  respect  and  love — but  his  care  and  pains 
were  so  great  for  the  common  good,  as  therewith  it 
is  thought  he  oppressed  himself,  and  shortened  his 
days,  and  one  morning,  early  in  the  spring,  he  came 
out  of  the  cornfields,  where  he  had  been  toiling 
with  the  rest,  sick,  and  died.  They  have  elected 
another  ;   but  who  is  there   now  to  be  governed  ? 

3 


18 

Thej  have  chosen  a  Captain,  too,  and  appointed 
Military  Orders ;  but  who  is  there  now  to  be  armed 
and  marched  to  battle  ?  At  the  end  of  three  months 
a  full  half  of  the  Company  are  dead — of  one  hun- 
dred persons  scarce  fifty  remain,  and  of  those,  the 
living  are  scarce  able  to  bury  the  dead,  the  well  not 
sufficient  to  tend  the  sick.  Were  there  no  graves 
in  England,  that  they  have  thus  come  out  to  die  in 
the  wilderness  ? 

But,  doubtless,  the  diminution  of  their  numbers 
has,  at  least,  saved  them  from  all  fear  of  famine. 
Their  little  cornfields  have  yielded  a  tolerable  crop, 
and  the  autumn  finds  such  as  have  survived,  in  com- 
parative health  and  plenty.  And  now,  the  first 
arrival  of  a  ship  from  England  rejoices  them  not  a 
little.  Once  more  they  are  to  hear  from  home, 
from  those  dear  families  and  friends  which  they 
have  left  behind  them,  to  receive  tokens  of  their 
remembrance  in  supplies  sent  to  their  relief,  per- 
haps to  behold  some  of  them  face  to  face  coming 
over  to  share  in  their  lonely  exile.  Alas !  one  of 
the  best  friends  to  their  enterprise  has,  indeed, 
come  over,  and  brought  five-and-thirty  persons  to 
live  in  their  plantation — but  the  ship  is  so  poorly 
furnished  with  provisions,  that  they  are  forced  to 
spare  her  some  of  theirs  to  carry  her  back,  while 
not  her  passengers  only,  but  themselves  too,  are 
soon  threatened  with  starvation.  The  whole  Com- 
pany are  forthwith  put  upon  half  allowance ; — but 
the  famine,  notw^ithstanding,  begins  to  pinch.  They 
look  hard  for  a  supply,  but  none  arrives.     They  spy 


19 

a  boat  at  sea  ;  it  is  nearing  the  shore  ;  it  comes  to 
land;  —  it  brings — a  letter;  —  it  brings  more;  —  it 
brings  seven  passengers  to  join  them ;  —  more 
mouths  to  eat,  but  no  food,  no  hope  of  any. — But 
they  liave  begged,  at  last,  of  a  fisherman  at  the 
Eastward,  as  much  bread  as  amounts  to  a  quarter 
of  a  pound  per  day  till  harvest,  and  with  that  they 
are  sustained  and  satisfied. 

And  now,  the  Narragansetts,  many  thousands 
strong,  begin  to  breathe  forth  threatenings  and 
slaughter  against  them,  mocking  at  their  weakness 
and  challenging  them  to  the  contest.  And  when 
they  look  for  the  arrival  of  more  friends  from 
England,  to  strengthen  them  in  this  hour  of  peril, 
they  find  a  disorderly,  unruly  band  of  fifty  or  sixty 
worthless  fellows  coming  amongst  them  to  devour 
their  substance,  to  waste  and  steal  their  corn,  and 
by  their  thefts  and  outrages  upon  the  natives,  also, 
to  excite  them  to  fresh  and  fiercer  hostilities. 

Turn  to  the  fate  of  their  first  mercantile  ad- 
venture. The  ship  which  arrived  in  their  harbor 
next  after  the  Mayflower  had  departed,  and  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  involved  them  in  the  dangers 
and  distresses  of  a  famine,  has  been  laden  with 
the  proceeds  of  their  traffic  with  the  Indians,  and 
with  the  fruits  of  their  own  personal  toil.  The 
little  cargo  consists  of  two  hogsheads  of  beaver 
and  other  skins,  and  good  clapboards  as  full  as  she 
can  hold — the  freight  estimated  in  all  at  near  five 
hundred  pounds. — What  emotions  of  pride,  what 
expectations  of  profit,  went  forth  with  that  little 


20 

outfit !  And  how  were  they  doomed  to  be  dashed 
and  disfjppointed  !  Just  as  the  ship  was  approaching 
the  English  coast,  she  was  seized  by  a  French 
freebooter,  and  robbed  of  all  she  had  worth  taking ! 
View  them  in  a  happier  hour,  in  a  scene  of 
prosperity  and  success.  They  have  a  gallant  warrior 
in  their  company,  whose  name,  albeit  it  was  the 
name  of  a  little  man,  (for  Miles  Standish  was 
hardly  more  than  five  feet  high,)  has  become  the 
very  synonyme  of  a  great  Captain.  An  alarm  has 
been  given  of  a  conspiracy  among  the  natives,  and 
he  has  been  empowered  to  enlist  as  many  men  as 
he  thinks  sufficient  to  make  his  party  good  against 
all  the  Indians  in  the  Massachusetts  Bay. — He  has 
done  so,  has  put  an  end  to  the  conspiracy,  and 
comes  home  laden  with  the  spoils  of  an  achieve- 
ment which  has  been  styled  by  his  biographer  his 
'  most  capital  exploit.' — How  long  a  list  of  killed 
and  wounded,  think  you,  is  reported  as  the  cre- 
dentials of  his  bloody  prowess,  and  how  many 
men  does  he  bring  with  him  to  share  in  the  honors 
of  the  triumph  ?  The  whole  number  of  Indians 
slain  in  this  expedition  was  six,  and  though  the 
Pilgrim  hero  brought  back  with  him  in  safety  every 
man  that  he  carried  out,  the  returnins:  host  num- 
bered  but  eight  beside  their  leader.  He  did  not 
take  more  with  him,  we  are  told,  in  order  to  prevent 
that  jealousy  of  military  power,  which,  it  seems, 
had  already  found  its  way  to  a  soil  it  has  never 
since  left.  But  his  proceedings,  notwithstanding, 
by   no   means  escaped   censure.     When   the   pious 


21 

Robinson  heard  of  this  transaction  in  Holland,  he 
wrote  to  the  Pilgrims  '  to  consider  the  disposition 
of  their  Captain,  who  was  of  a  warm  temper,' 
adding,  however,  this  beautiful  sentiment  in  rela- 
tion to  the  wretched  race  to  which  the  victims  of 
the  expedition  belonged  — '  it  would  have  been 
happy,  if  they  had  converted  some,  before  they  had 
killed  any.' 

Inconceivable  Fortune  !  Unimaginable  Destiny  ! 
Inscrutable  Providence  !  Are  these  the  details  of 
an  event  from  which  such  all-important,  all-per- 
vading influences  were  to  flow?  Were  these  the 
means,  and  these  the  men,  through  which  not  New 
Plymouth  only  was  to  be  planted,  not  New  England 
only  to  be  founded,  not  our  whole  Country  only  to 
be  formed  and  moulded,  but  the  whole  Hemisphere 
to  be  shaped  and  the  whole  world  shaken  ?  Yes, 
Fellow  Citizens,  this  was  the  event,  these  were 
the  means,  and  these  the  men,  by  which  these 
mighty  impulses  and  momentous  eflects  actually 
have  been  produced.  And  inadequate,  unadapted, 
impotent,  to  such  ends,  as  to  outward  appearances 
they  may  seem,  there  was  a  Power  in  them  and  a 
Power  over  them  amply  sufficient  for  their  accom- 
plishment, and  the  only  powers  that  were  thus 
sufficient. — The  direct  and  immediate  influence  of 
the  passengers  in  the  Mayflower,  either  upon  the 
destinies  of  our  own  land  or  of  others,  may,  indeed, 
have  been  less  conspicuous  than  that  of  some  of  the 
New  England  Colonists  who  followed  them.  But 
it  was  the  bright  and  shining  wake  they  left  upon 


22 

the  waves,  it  was  the  clear  and  brilliant  beacon 
they  lighted  upon  the  shores,  that  caused  them  to 
have  any  followers.  They  were  the  pioneers  in 
that  peculiar  path  of  emigration  which  alone  con- 
ducted to  these  great  results.  They,  as  was  written 
to  them  by  their  brethren  in  the  very  outset  of  their 
enterprize,  were  the  instruments  to  break  the  ice 
for  others,  and  theirs  shall  be  the  honor  unto  the 
world's  end  ! 

When  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  landed  upon  Plymouth 
Rock,  one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  years  had 
elapsed  since  the  discovery  of  the  New  World  by 
Columbus. — During  this  long  period,  the  Southern 
Continent  of  America  had  been  the  main  scene  of 
European  adventure  and  enterprise.  And  richly 
had  it  repaid  the  exertions  which  had  been  made  to 
subdue  and  settle  it.  The  Empires  of  Montezuma 
and  the  Incas  had  surrendered  themselves  at  the 
first  summons  before  the  chivalrous  energies  of 
Cortes  and  Pizarro,  and  Brazil  had  mingled  her 
diamonds  with  the  gold  and  silver  of  Mexico  and 
Peru,  to  deck  the  triumphs  and  crown  the  rapacity 
of  the  Spaniard  and  the  Portuguese. 

But  the  Northern  Continent  had  been  by  no 
means  neglected  in  the  adventures  of  the  day.  Nor 
had  those  adventures  been  confined  to  the  subjects 
of  Portugal  and  Spain.  The  Monarchs  of  those 
two  kingdoms,  indeed,  emboldened  by  their  success 
at  the  South,  had  put  forth  pretensions  to  the  sole 
jurisdiction  of  the  whole  New  Hemisphere.     But 


23 

Francis  the  First  had  well  replied,  that  he  should 
be  glad  to  see  the  clause  in  Adam^s  Will.,  which 
made  the  Northern  Continent  their  exclusive  inheri- 
tance, and  France,  under  his  lead,  had  set  about 
securing  for  herself  a  share  of  the  spoils.  It  was 
under  French  patronage  that  John  Verazzani  was 
sailing  in  1524,  when  the  harbor  of  New  York, 
especially  attracted  his  notice  for  its  great  con- 
venience and  pleasantness. 

But  England,  also, — with  better  right  than  either 
of  the  others,  claiming,  as  she  could,  under  the 
Cabots — had  not  been  inattentive  to  the  opportunity 
of  enlaririno;  her  dominions,  and  I  have  already 
alluded  to  sundry  unsuccessful  attempts  which  were 
made  by  the  English  to  effect  this  object,  during 
the  reign  and  under  the  patronage  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth. 

Within  a  few  months  previous  to  the  close  of  her 
reign  and  without  her  patronage,  Bartholomew 
Gosnold  added  another  to  the  list  of  these  unavail- 
ing efforts — having  only  achieved  for  himself  the 
distinction  of  being  the  first  Englishman  that  ever 
trod  what  was  afterwards  known  as  the  New  Eng- 
land shore,  and  of  having  given  to  the  point  of  that 
shore  upon  which  he  first  set  foot,  the  homely,  but 
now  endeared  and  honored  title  of  Cape  Cod. 

Only  a  few  years  after  the  death  of  the  Queen, 
however,  these  efforts  were  renewed  with  fresh 
zeal.  As  early  as  1606,  King  James  divided  the 
Virginia  of  Elizabeth  into  two  parts,  and  assigned 
the  colonization  of  them  to  two  separate  companies, 


24 

by  one  of  which,  and  especially  by  its  President, 
the  Lord  Chief  Justice  Popham,  an  attempt  was 
immediately  made  to  settle  the  New  England  coast. 
A  colony,  indeed,  was  actually  planted  under  his 
patronage,  and  under  the  personal  lead  of  his  brother, 
at  Sagadahoc,  near  the  mouth  of  the  Kennebec 
River,  in  1607.  But  it  remained  there  only  a 
single  year,  and  was  broken  up  under  such  dis- 
heartening circumstances, — the  Colonists  on  their 
return  branding  the  Country  '  as  over-cold  and  not 
habitable  by  our  Nation,' — that  the  Adventurers 
gave  up  their  designs. 

Five  or  six  years  later,  notwithstanding,  in  1614, 
the  famous  Captain  John  Smith,  who  had  already, 
under  the  auspices  of  the  other  of  the  two  Com- 
panies, established  what  afterwards  proved  to  be, 
rather  than  really  then  was,  a  permanent  settlement 
in  Southern  Virginia,  having  founded  Jamestown  in 
1607,  was  induced  to  visit  and  survey  this  Northern 
Virginia  also,  as  it  was  then  called.  And  after  his 
return  home.  Captain  Smith  prepared  and  published 
a  detailed  account  of  the  Country  with  a  map,  call- 
ing it  for  the  first  time,  and  as  if  to  secure  for  it  all 
the  favor  which  the  associations  of  a  noble  name 
could  bestow,  New  England,  and  giving  a  most 
glowing  description  of  the  riches  both  of  soil  and 
sea,  of  forests  and  fisheries,  which  awaited  the 
enjoyment  of  the  settler. — '  For  I  am  not  so  sim- 
ple,' said  he,  (fortunate,  fortunate  for  the  founda- 
tion of  the  Country  he  was  describing,  such  sim- 
plicity was  at  length  discovered  !)  '  for  I  am   not 


25 

so  simple  as  to  think  that  ever  any  other  motive 
than  ivealth,  will  ever  erect  there  a  common  weal, 
or  draw  company  from  their  ease  and  humors  at 
home  to  stay  in  New  England.' 

During  the  following  year  this  gallant  and  chival- 
rous seaman  and  soldier  evinced  the  sincerity  of  the 
opinion  which  he  had  thus  publicly  expressed,  as  to 
the  inviting  character  of  the  spot,  by  attempting  a 
settlement  there  himself,  and  made  two  successive 
voyages  for  that  purpose.  But  both  of  them  were 
continued  scenes  of  disappointments  and  disaster, 
and  he,  too,  for  whose  lion-hearted  heroism  nothing 
had  ever  seemed  too  difficult,  was  compelled  to 
acknowledge  himself  overmatched,  and  abandon  the 
undertaking. 

And  where  now  were  the  hopes  of  planting  New 
England  ?  The  friends  to  the  enterprise  were  at 
their  wit's  end.  All  that  the  patronage  of  princes, 
all  that  the  combined  energies  of  rich  and  powerful 
Corporations,  all  that  the  individual  efforts  of  the 
boldest  and  most  experienced  i)rivate  Adventurers, 
stimulated  by  the  most  glowing  imaginations  of  the 
gains  which  awaited  their  grasp,  could  do,  had  been 
done,  and  done  in  vain.  Means  and  motives  of 
this  sort,  had  effected  nothing,  indeed,  on  the  whole 
North  American  Continent,  after  more  than  half  a 
century  of  uninterrupted  operation,  but  a  little 
settlement  at  one  extremity  by  the  Si)anish,  (St. 
Augustine  in  1565,)  a  couple  of  smaller  settlements 
at  the  other  extremity  by  the  French,  (Port  Royal, 
in   1605  and   Quebec,  in   1609,)   and   smaller  and 

4 


26 

more  precarious  tlian  eitlier,  the  Jamestown  settle- 
ment about  midway  between  the  two — this  last 
being  the  only  shadow — and  but  a  shadow  it  was — 
of  English  Colonization  on  the  whole  Continent. 

But  the  Atlantic  Coast  of  North  America,  and 
especially  that  part  of  it  which  was  to  be  known  as 
New  England,  was  destined  to  date  its  ultimate 
occupation  to  something  higher  and  nobler  than  the 
chivalry  of  Adventurers,  the  greediness  of  Corpora- 
tions or  the  ambition  of  Kings.  The  lust  of  new 
dominion,  the  thirst  for  treasure,  the  quest  for  spoil, 
had  found  an  ample  field,  reaped  an  overflowing 
harvest,  and  rioted  in  an  almost  fatal  surfeit  on  the 
Southern  Continent.  It  might  almost  seem,  in  view 
of  the  lofty  destinies  which  were  in  store  for  the 
Northern,  in  contemplation  of  the  momentous  influ- 
ences it  was  to  exert  upon  the  welfare  of  mankind 
and  the  progress  of  the  world,  as  if  Providence  had 
heaped  those  treasures  and  clustered  those  jewels 
upon  the  soil  of  Peru  and  Mexico,  to  divert  the 
interest,  absorb  the  passions,  cloy  the  appetite  and 
glut  the  rapacity  which  were  naturally  aroused  by 
the  discovery  of  a  New  World.  We  might  almost 
imagine  the  guardian  Spirit  of  the  Pilgrims  com- 
missioned to  cast  down  this  golden  fruit  and  strew 
this  Hesperian  harvest  along  the  pathway  of  the 
newly  awakened  enterprise,  to  secure  the  more 
certainly  for  the  subjects  of  its  appointed  care,  the 
possession  of  their  promised  land — their  dowerless, 
but  chosen  Atalanta. 

But  I  am  anticipating  an  idea  which  must  not  be 


27 

thus  summarily  dismissed,  and  to  which  I  may 
presently  find  an  opportunity  to  do  better  justice. 
Meantime,  however,  let  me  remark,  that  we  are  not 
left  altogether  to  supernatural  agency  for  at  least  the 
secondary  impulse  under  which  New  England  was 
colonized.  Nor  were  the  earthly  princes  and  poten- 
tates of  whom  I  have  already  spoken, — Elizabeth, 
her  Minister  of  Justice,  and  her  successor  in  the 
throne, — though  so  signally  frustrated  in  all  their 
direct  endeavors  to  that  end,  without  a  most  pow- 
erful, though  wholly  indirect  and  involuntary,  in- 
fluence, upon  its  final  accomplishment. 

The  daughter  of  Ann  BuUen  could  not  fail  to 
cherish  a  most  hearty  and  implacable  hatred  towards 
that  Church,  in  defiance  of  whose  thunders  she  was 
conceived  and  cradled,  and  in  the  eye  and  open 
declaration  of  which  she  was  a  bastard,  a  heretic, 
an  outlaw  and  an  usurper.  So  far,  at  any  rate, 
Elizabeth  was  a  friend  to  the  Reformation.  But 
she  had  almost  as  little  notion  as  her  Father,  of  any 
reformation  which  reached  beyond  releasing  her 
dominions  from  the  authority  of  the  Pope,  and 
establishing  herself  at  the  head  of  the  Church. 
And,  accordingly,  the  very  first  year  of  her  reign 
was  marked  by  the  enactment  of  Laws,  exacting, 
under  the  severest  penalties,  conformity  to  the  doc- 
trines and  discipline  of  the  English  Church — a 
policy  which  she  never  relinquished. 

For  a  violation  of  these  Laws  and  others  of  sub- 
sequent enactment  but  of  similar  import,  a  large 
number  of  persons  in  her  kingdom,  whose  minds 


28 

had  bccMi  too  tlioroughly  inspired  with  disgust  for 
the  masks  and  mummeries  of  Catholic  worship,  to 
be  content  with  a  bare  renunciation  of  the  temporal 
or  spiritual  authority  of  the  Pope,  were  arrested, 
imprisoned,  and  treated  with  all  manner  of  persecu- 
tion. At  least  six  of  them  were  capitally  executed, 
and  two  of  these,  as  it  happened,  were  condemned 
to  death  by  that  very  Lord  Chief  Justice,  whom 
we  have  seen  a  icw  years  afterwards,  at  the  head 
of  the  Plymouth  Company,  engaged  in  so  earnest 
but  unavailing  an  effort  to  colonize  the  New  Eng- 
land Coast.  Little  did  he  know  that  his  part  in 
that  work  had  been  already  performed. 

In  an  imaginary  '  Dialogue  between  some  Young 
Men  born  in  New  England  and  sundry  Ancient  Men 
that  came  out  of  Holland  and  Old  England,'  writ- 
ten in  1648  by  Gov.  Bradford — a  name  which  be- 
fore all  others  should  be  this  day  remembered  with 
veneration — the  Young  Men  are  represented  as 
asking  of  the  Old  Men,  how  many  Separatists  had 
been  executed.  '  We  know  certainly  of  six,' 
replied  the  ancient  men,  '  that  were  publicly  exe- 
cuted, besides  such  as  died  in  prisons.  *  *  *  Two 
of  them  were  condemned  by  cruel  Judge  Popham, 
whose  countenance  and  carriage  was  very  rough 
and  severe  towards  them,  with  many  sharp  mena- 
ces. But  God  gave  them  courage  to  bear  it,  and 
to  make  this  answer  : — 


'  My  Lord,  your  face  wc  fear  not, 
And  for  your  threats  we  care  not. 
And  to  conio  to  your  read  service  we  dare  not.' 


29 

Nor  did  King  James  depart  from  the  footsteps  of 
his  predecessor  in  the  religious  policy  of  his  ad- 
ministration. Though  from  his  Scotch  education 
and  connections,  and  from  the  opinions  which  he 
had  openly  avowed  before  coming  to  the  English 
throne,  he  had  seemed  pledged  to  a  career  of  liber- 
ality and  toleration,  yet  no  sooner  was  he  fairly 
seated  on  that  throne  than  he,  too,  set  about  vindi- 
cating his  claim  to  his  new  title  of  '  Defender  of 
the  Faith,'  and  enforcing  conformity  to  the  rites 
and  ceremonies  of  the  English  Church.  And  he 
cut  short  a  conference  at  Hampton  Court,  between 
himself  and  the  Puritan  leaders,  got  up  at  his  own 
instigation  in  the  vainglorious  idea  that  he  could 
vanquish  these  heretics  in  an  argument,  with  this 
summary  and  most  significant  declaration — '  If  this 
be  all  they  have  to  say,  I  will  make  them  conform, 
or  I  will  harry  them  out  of  the  land.^ 

The  idea  of  banishment  was  full  of  bitterness  to 
those  to  whom  it  was  thus  sternly  held  up.  They 
loved  their  native  land  with  an  affection  which  no 
rigor  of  restraint,  no  cruelty  of  persecution,  could 
quench.  Death  itself,  to  some  of  them  at  least, 
seemed  to  have  fewer  fears  than  exile.  '  We  crave,' 
was  the  touching  language  of  a  Petition  of  sixty 
Separatists  in  1592,  who  had  been  committed  un- 
bailable to  close  prison  in  London,  where  they  were 
allowed  neither  meat  nor  drink,  nor  lodging,  and 
where  no  one  was  suffered  to  have  access  to  them, 
so  as  no  felons  or  traitors  or  murderers  were  thus 
dealt  with, — '  We  crave  for  all  of  us  but  the  liberty 


30 

either  to  die  openly  or  to  live  openly  in  the  land  of 
our  nativity.  If  we  deserve  death,  it  beseemeth 
the  majesty  of  justice  not  to  see  us  closely  mur- 
dered, yea,  starved  to  death  with  hunger  and  cold, 
and  stifled  in  loathsome  dungeons.  If  we  be  guilt- 
less, we  crave  but  the  benefit  of  our  innocence,  that 
we  may  have  peace  to  serve  our  God  and  our  Prince 
in  the  place  of  the  sepulchres  of  our  Fathers.' 

But  there  were  those  among  them,  notwithstand- 
ing, to  whom  menaces,  whether  of  banishment  or  of 
the  block,  even  uttered  thus  angrily  by  one,  who, 
as  he  once  well  said  of  himself,  '  while  he  held  the 
appointment  of  Judges  and  Bishops  in  his  hand, 
could  make  what  Law,  and  what  Gospel  he  chose,' 
were  alike  powerless,  to  prevail  on  them  to  conform 
to  modes  and  creeds  which  they  did  not  of  them- 
selves approve.  They  heard  a  voice  higher  and 
mightier  than  James's,  calling  to  them  in  the 
accents  of  their  own  consciences,  and  saying,  in  the 
express  language  of  a  volume,  which  it  had  been 
the  most  precious  result  of  all  the  discoveries,  in- 
ventions and  improvements  of  that  age  of  wonders, 
to  unlock  to  them — '  Be  ye  not  conformed — but  be 
ye  transformed ' — and  that  voice,  summon  it  to 
exile,  or  summon  it  to  the  grave,  they  were  resolved 
to  obey. 

Foiled,  therefore,  utterly  in  the  first  of  his  alter- 
natives, the  king  resorted  to  the  last.  It  was  more 
W'ithin  the  compass  of  his  power,  and  he  did  harry 
them  out  of  the  land.  Within  three  years  after  the 
utterance  of  this  threat,  (viz.  in   1607,)  it  is  re- 


31 

corded  by  the  Chronologist,  that  Messrs.  Clifton's 
and  Robinson's  church  in  the  North  of  England, 
being  extremely  harrassed,  sonic  cast  into  prison, 
some  beset  in  their  houses,  some  forced  to  leave 
their  farms  and  families,  begin  to  fly  over  to  Hol- 
land for  purity  of  worship  and  liberty  of  conscience. 

Religions,  true  and  false,  have  had  their  Hegiras, 
and  Institutions  and  Empires  have  owed  their  origin 
to  the  flight  of  a  child,  a  man,  or  a  multitude. 
Moses  fled  from  the  face  of  Pharaoh, — but  he  re- 
turned to  overwhelm  him  with  the  judgments  of 
Jehovah,  and  to  build  up  Israel  into  a  mighty 
People.  Mahomet  with  his  followers  fled  from  the 
Magistrates  of  Mecca, — but  he  came  back,  with  the 
sword  in  one  hand  and  the  Koran  in  the  other,  and 
the  Empire  of  the  Saracens  was  soon  second  to 
none  on  the  globe.  '  The  Young  Child  and  his 
Mother'  fled  from  the  fury  of  Herod, — but  they 
returned,  and  the  banner  of  the  Cross  was  still  des- 
tined to  go  forth  conquering  and  to  conquer.  The 
Pilgrim  Fathers,  also,  fled  from  the  oppression  of 
this  arbitrary  tyrant,  and,  although  their  return  was 
to  a  widely  distant  portion  of  his  dominions,  yet 
return  they  did,  and  the  Freedom  and  Indepen- 
dence of  a  great  Republic,  delivered  from  the  yoke 
of  that  tyrant's  successors,  date  back  their  origin 
this  day,  to  the  principles  for  which  they  were  pro- 
scribed, and  to  the  institutions  which  they  planted  ! 

But  let  us  follow  them  in  their  eventful  flight. 
They  first  settle  at  Amsterdam,  where  they  remain 
for  about  a  year,  and  are  soon  joined  by  the  rest  of 


32 

their  bretliren.  But  finding  that  some  contentions 
had  arisen  in  a  Church  which  was  there  before 
them,  and  fearing  that  they  might  themselves  be- 
come embroiled  in  them,  though  they  knew  it 
would  be  very  much  '  to  the  prejudice  of  their  out- 
ward interest'  to  remove,  yet  '  valuing  peace  and 
spiritual  comfort  above  all  other  riches'  they  depart 
to  Leyden,  and  there  live  '  in  great  love  and  har- 
mony both  among  themselves  and  their  neighbor 
citizens  for  above  eleven  years.' 

But,  although  during  all  this  time  they  had  been 
courteously  entertained  and  lovingly  respected  by 
the  people,  and  had  quietly  and  sweetly  enjoyed 
their  Church  liberties  under  the  States,  yet  finding 
that,  owing  to  the  difference  of  their  language,  they 
could  exert  but  little  influence  over  the  Dutch,  and 
had  not  yet  succeeded  in  bringing  them  to  reform 
the  neglect  of  observation  of  the  Lord's  day  as  a 
Sabbath,  or  any  other  thing  amiss  among  them, — 
that,  owing,  also,  to  the  licentiousness  of  youth  in 
that  Country  and  the  manifold  temptations  of  the 
place,  their  children  were  drawn  away  by  evil 
examples  into  extravagant  and  dangerous  courses, 
they  now  begin  to  fear  that  Holland  would  be  no 
place  for  their  church  and  their  posterity  to  con- 
tinue in  comfortably,  and  on  those  accounts  to  think 
of  a  remove  to  America.  And  having  hesitated 
a  while  between  Guiana  and  Virginia  as  a  place  of 
resort,  and  having  at  last  resolved  on  the  latter,  they 
send  their  agents  to  treat  with  the  Virginia  Com- 
pany for  a  right  within  their  chartered  limits,  and 


33 

to  see  if  the  King  would  give  them  liberty  of  con- 
science there.  The  Company  they  found  ready 
enough  to  grant  them  a  patent  with  ample  privi- 
leges, but  liberty  of  conscience  under  the  broad  seal 
King  James  could  never  be  brought  to  bestow,  and 
the  most  that  could  be  extorted  from  him  by  the 
most  persevering  importunity  was  a  promise,  that 
he  would  connive  at  them,  and  not  molest  them, 
provided  they  should  carry  themselves  peaceably. 

Notwithstanding  this  discouragement,  however, 
tliey  resolved  to  venture.  And  after  another  year 
of  weary  negotiation  with  the  merchants  who  were 
to  provide  them  with  a  passage,  the  day  for  their 
departure  arrives. — It  had  been  agreed  that  a  part 
of  the  church  should  go  before  their  brethren  to 
America  to  prepare  for  the  rest,  and  as  the  major 
part  was  to  stay  behind,  it  was  also  determined  that 
their  pastor,  the  beloved  Robinson,  should  stay  with 
them.  Not  only  were  the  Pilgrims  thus  about  to 
leave  '  that  goodly  and  pleasant  City  which  had 
been  their  resting  place  above  eleven  years,'  but 
to  leave  behind  them  also  the  greatest  part  of  those 
with  whom  they  had  been  so  long  and  lovingly 
associated  in  a  strange  land,  and  this — to  encounter 
all  the  real  and  all  the  imaginary  terrors  which 
belonged  to  that  infancy  of  ocean  navigation,  to 
cross  a  sea  of  three  thousand  miles  in  breadth, 
and  to  reach  at  last  a  shore  which  had  hitherto 
repelled  the  approaches  of  every  civilized  settler ! 
Who  can  describe  the  agonies  of  such  a  scene  ? 
Their  Memorialist  has  done  it  in  language  as  satis- 

5 


34 

factory  as  any  language  can  be,  but  the  description 
still  seems  cold  and  feeble. 

'  And  now  the  time  being  come  when  they  were  to 
depart,'  says  he,  '  they  were  accompanied  with  most 
of  their  brethren  out  of  the  City  unto  a  Town  called 
Delft  Haven,  where  the  ship  lay  ready  to  receive 
them.  *  *  *  One  night  was  spent  with  little  sleep  with 
the  most,  but  with  friendly  entertainment  and  Chris- 
tian discourse,  and  other  real  expressions  of  true 
Christian  love.  The  next  day,  the  wind  being  fair, 
they  went  on  board,  and  their  friends  with  them, 
where  truly  doleful  was  the  sight  of  that  sad  and 
mournful  parting,  to  hear  what  sighs  and  sobs  and 
prayers  did  sound  amongst  them,  what  tears  did 
gush  from  every  eye,  and  pithy  speeches  pierced 
each  others'  hearts,  that  sundry  of  the  Dutch 
strangers,  that  stood  on  the  Key  as  spectators, 
could  not  refrain  from  tears.  But  the  tide  (which 
stays  for  no  man)  calling  them  away  that  were 
thus  loth  to  depart,  their  reverend  pastor  falling 
down  on  his  knees,  and  they  all  with  him,  with 
watery  cheeks  commended  them  with  most  fervent 
prayers  unto  the  Lord  and  his  blessing ; — and  then 
with  mutual  embraces  and  many  tears  they  took 
their  leave  of  one  another,  which  proved  to  be  the 
last  leave  to  many  of  them.' 

Such  was  the  embarkation  of  the  New  England 
Fathers  ! — Such  the  commencement  of  that  Pilgrim 
Voyage,  whose  progress  during  a  period  of  five 
months  I  have  already  described,  and  whose  ter- 
mination we  this  day  commemorate !     Under  these 


35 

auspices  and  by  these  instruments  was  at  last  com- 
pleted an  undertaking  which  had  so  long  baffled  the 
efforts  of  Statesmen  and  Heroes,  of  Corporations 
and  of  Kings !  Said  I  not  rightly  that  the  Pilgrims 
had  a  power  within  them,  and  a  Power  over  them, 
which  was  not  only  amply  adequate  to  its  accom- 
plishment, but  the  only  powers  that  were  thus  ade- 
quate ?  And  who  requires  to  be  reminded  what 
those  powers  were  ? 

I  fear  not  to  be  charged  whh  New  England 
bigotry  or  Puritan  fanaticism  in  alluding  to  the 
Power  which  was  over  the  Pilgrims  in  their  humble 
but  heroic  enterprise.  If  Washington,  in  reviewing 
the  events  of  our  Revolutionary  history,  could  say 
to  the  American  Armies  as  he  quitted  their  com- 
mand, that  'the  singular  interpositions  of  Providence 
in  our  feeble  condition  were  such  as  could  scarcely 
escape  the  attention  of  the  most  unobserving,'  and 
again  to  the  American  Congress,  on  first  assuming 
the  administration  of  the  Union,  that  'every  step 
by  which  the  People  of  the  United  States  had 
advanced  to  the  character  of  an  Independent  Nation 
seemed  to  have  been  distinguished  by  some  token 
of  Providential  agency,'  how  much  less  can  any 
one  be  in  danger  of  subjecting  himself  to  the  im- 
putation of  indulging  in  a  wild  conceit  or  yielding 
to  a  weak  superstition,  by  acknowledging,  by  as- 
serting, a  Divine  intervention  in  the  history  of  New 
England  Colonization.  It  were  easy,  it  is  true, 
to  convey  the  same  sentiment  in  more  fashionable 
phraseology — to  disguise  an  allusion  to  a  Wonder- 


36 

vvorkins:  Providence  under  the  name  of  an  ex- 
traordinary  Fortune  or  cloak  the  idea  of  a  Divine 
appointment  under  the  title  of  a  lucky  accident. 
But  I  should  feel  that  I  dishonored  the  memory 
of  our  New  England  sires,  and  deserved  the  re- 
buke of  their  assembled  sons,  were  I,  on  an  occa- 
sion like  the  present,  to  resort  to  such  miserable 
paltering. 

No — I  see  something  more  than  mere  fortunate 
accidents  or  extraordinary  coincidences  in  the  v\'hole 
discovery  and  colonization  of  our  Country — in  the 
age  at  which  these  events  took  place,  in  the  People 
by  whom  they  were  effected,  and  more  especially  in 
the  circumstances  by  which  they  were  attended,  and 
may  my  tongue  cleave  to  the  roof  of  my  mouth  if 
ever  I  am  ashamed  to  say  so ! 

When  I  reflect  that  this  entire  Hemisphere  of 
ours  remained  so  long  in  a  condition  of  primeval 
barbarism — that  the  very  existence  of  its  vast  Con- 
tinents was  so  long  concealed  from  the  knowledge 
of  civilized  man — that  these  colossal  mountains  so 
long  lifted  their  summits  to  the  sky  and  cast  their 
shadows  across  the  earth — that  these  gigantic  rivers 
so  long  poured  their  mighty,  matchless  waters  to  the 
sea — that  these  magnificent  forests  so  long  waved 
their  unrivalled  foliage  to  the  winds,  and  these 
luxuriant  fields  and  prairies  so  long  spread  out 
their  virgin  sods  before  the  sun — without  a  single 
intelligent  human  being  to  enjoy,  to  admire,  or 
even  to  behold  them — when  I  reflect  to  what  heights 
of  civilization,  ambition  and  power  so  many  of  the 


37 

Nations  of  the  Old  World  were  successively  ad- 
vanced, reaching  a  perfection  in  some  branches  of 
art  and  of  science  which  has  destined  their  very 
ruins  to  be  the  wonder,  the  delight,  the  study  and 
the  models  of  mankind  for  ever,  and  pushing  their 
Commerce  and  their  Conquests  over  sea  and  shore 
with  an  energy  so  seemingly  indomitable  and  illimi- 
table, and  yet  that  these  seas  and  these  shores, 
reserved  for  other  Argonauts  than  those  of  Greece 
and  other  Eagles  than  those  of  Rome,  were  pro- 
tected alike  from  the  reach  of  their  arts  and  their 
arms,  from  their  rage  for  glory  and  their  lust  for 
spoils — when  I  reflect  that  all  the  varieties  of  roam- 
ing tribes  which,  up  to  the  period  of  the  events  of 
which  I  speak,  had  foimd  their  way  nobody  knows 
when  or  from  whence,  to  this  Northern  Continent 
at  least,  were  so  mysteriously  endowed  with  a 
nature,  not  merely  to  make  no  progress  in  im- 
provement and  settlement  of  themselves,  but  even 
to  resist  and  defy  every  influence  which  could  be 
brought  to  bear  upon  them  by  others,  except  such 
as  tended  to  their  own  extirpation  and  overthrow — 
how  they  shrank  at  the  approach  of  the  civilized 
settler,  melting  away  as  they  retired,  and  marking 
the  trail  of  their  retreat,  I  had  almost  said,  by  the 
scent  of  their  own  graves — or,  if  some  stragglers  of 
a  race  less  barbarous,  at  some  uncertain  epoch,  were 
brought  unknowingly  upon  our  shores,  that,  instead 
of  stamping  the  Rock  upon  which  they  landed  with 
the  unequivocal  foot-prints  of  the  Fathers  of  a  mighty 
Nation,  they  only  scratched  upon  its  surface  a  few 


38 

illegible  characters,  to  puzzle  the  future  antiquary  to 
decide  whether  they  were  of  Scandinavian  or  of  Car- 
thaginian, of  Runic  or  of  Punic  origin^  and  to  prove 
only  this  distinctly — that  their  authors  were  not 
destined  to  be  the  settlers,  or  even  the  discoverers, 
in  any  true  sense  of  that  term,  of  the  Country  upon 
which  they  had  thus  prematurely  stumbled — when  I 
reflect  upon  the  momentous  changes  in  the  institu- 
tions of  society  and  in  the  instruments  of  human 
power,  which  were  crowded  within  the  period  which 
was  ultimately  signalized  by  this  discovery  and  this 
settlement — the  press,  by  its  magic  enginery,  breaking 
down  every  barrier  and  annihilating  every  monopoly 
in  the  paths  of  knowledge,  and  proclaiming  all  men 
equal  in  the  arts  of  peace — gunpowder,  by  its  tre- 
mendous properties,  undermining  the  moated  castles 
and  rending  asunder  the  plaited  mail  of  the  lordly 
Chieftains,  and  making  all  men  equal  on  the  field 
of  battle — the  Bible,  rescued  from  its  unknown 
tongues,  its  unauthorized  interpretations  and  its  un- 
worthy perversions,  opened  at  length  in  its  original 
simplicity  and  purity  to  the  world,  and  proving  that 
all  men  were  born  equal  in  the  eye  of  God — when 
I  see  learning  reviving  from  its  lethargy  of  centuries, 
religion  reasserting  its  native  majesty,  and  liberty 
—  liberty  itself — thus  armed  and  thus  attended, 
starting  up  anew  to  its  long  suspended  career,  and 
exclaiming,  as  it  were,  in  the  confidence  of  its  new 
instruments  and  its  new  auxiliaries — '  Give  me  now 
a  place  to  stand  upon — a  place  free  from  the  in- 
terference of  established  power,  a  place  free  from 


39 

the  embarrassment  of  ancient  abuses,  a  place  free 
from  the  paralyzing  influence  of  a  jealous  and  over- 
bearing prerogative — give  me  hut  a  place  to  stand 
upon  and  I  tvill  move  the  ivorld ' — I  cannot  consider 
it,  I  cannot  call  it,  a  mere  fortunate  coincidence, 
that  then,  at  that  very  instant,  the  veil  of  waters 
was  lifted  up,  that  place  revealed,  and  the  world 
moved  ! 

When  1  reflect,  too,  on  the  Nation  under  whose 
reluctant  auspices  this  revelation  was  finally  vouch- 
safed to  the  longing  vision  of  the  intrepid  Admiral — 
how  deeply  it  was  already  plunged  in  the  grossest 
superstitions  and  sensualities,  how  darkly  it  was 
already  shadowed  by  the  impending  horrors  of  its 
Dread  Tribunal,  and  how  soon  it  was  to  lose  the 
transient  lustre  which  might  be  reflected  upon  it 
from  the  virtues  of  an  Isabella,  or  the  genius  of  a 
Charles  V.,  and  to  sink  into  a  long  and  rayless 
night  of  ignorance  and  oppression — when  I  look 
back  upon  its  sister  kingdom  of  the  Peninsula,  also, 
which  shared  with  it  in  reaping  the  teeming  first 
fruits  of  the  new  found  world,  and  find  them  match- 
ing each  other  not  more  nearly  in  the  boldness  of 
their  maritime  enterprise,  than  in  the  sternness  of 
their  religious  bigotry  and  in  the  degradation  of  their 
approaching  doom — and  when  I  remember  how  both 
of  these  kingdoms,  from  any  Colonies  of  whose 
planting  there  could  have  been  so  poor  a  hope  of 
any  early  or  permanent  advancement  to  the  cause  of 
human  freedom,  were  attracted  and  absorbed  by  the 
mineral  and  vegetable  treasures  of  the  tropical  islands 


40 

and  territories  and  by  the  gorgeous  empires  which 
spirits  of  congenial  grossness  and  sensuality  had 
already  established  there — while  this  precise  portion 
of  America,  these  noble  harbors,  these  glorious  hills, 
these  exhauslless  valleys  and  matchless  lakes,  pre- 
senting a  combination  of  climate  and  of  soil,  of 
land  course  and  water  course,  marked  and  quoted 
as  it  were,  by  Nature  herself,  for  the  abode  of  a 
great,  united  and  prosperous  Republic — the  rock- 
bound  region  of  New  England  not  excepted  from 
the  category,  which,  though  it  can  boast  of  nothing 
nearer  akin  to  gold  or  diamonds  than  the  sparkling 
mica  of  its  granite  or  the  glittering  crystals  of  its 
ice,  was  yet  framed  to  produce  a  wealth  richer  than 
gold,  and  whose  price  is  above  rubies — the  intelli- 
gent and  virtuous  industry  of  a  free  people — when  I 
remember,  I  say,  how  this  exact  portion  of  the  new 
world  was  held  back  for  more  than  a  century  after 
its  discovery,  and  reserved  for  the  occupation  and 
settlement  of  the  only  Nation  under  the  sun  able  to 
furnish  the  founders  of  such  a  Republic  and  the 
progenitors  of  such  a  People — the  very  Nation  in 
which  the  reforms  and  inventions  of  the  day  had 
wrought  incomparably  the  most  important  results, 
and  human  improvement  and  human  liberty  made 
incalculably  the  largest  advance — I  cannot  regard  it, 
I  cannot  speak  of  it,  as  a  mere  lucky  accident,  that 
this  Atlantic  seaboard  was  settled  by  colonies  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race ! 

And  when,   lastly,  1   reflect  on  the  circumstances 
under  which  this  settlement  was  in  the  end  effected, 


41 

on  that  part  of  the  coast,  more  especially,  which 
exerted  a  paramount  influence  on  the  early  destinies 
of  the  Continent,  and  gave  the  first  unequivocal 
assurance  that  virtue  and  industry  and  freedom  were 
here  to  find  a  refuge  and  here  to  found  themselves 
an  empire — when  I  behold  a  feeble  company  of 
exiles,  quitting  the  strange  land  to  which  persecution 
had  forced  them  to  flee,  entering  with  so  many  sighs 
and  sobs  and  partings  and  prayers  on  a  voyage  so 
full  of  perils  at  the  best,  but  rendered  a  hundred  fold 
more  perilous  by  the  unusual  severities  of  the  season 
and  the  absolute  unseaworthiness  of  their  ship, 
arriving  in  the  depth  of  winter  on  a  coast  to  which 
even  their  pilot  was  a  perfect  stranger,  and  where 
'  they  had  no  friends  to  welcome  them,  no  inns  to 
entertain  them,  no  houses,  much  less  towns,  to  repair 
unto  for  succor,'  but  where, — instead  of  friends, 
shelter  or  refreshment, — famine,  exposure,  the  wolf, 
the  savage,  disease  and  death  seemed  waiting  for 
them — and  yet  accomplishing  an  end  which  Royalty 
and  patronage,  the  love  of  dominion  and  of  gold, 
individual  adventure  and  corporate  enterprise  had  so 
long  essayed  in  vain,  and  founding  a  Colony  which 
was  to  defy  alike  the  machinations  and  the  menaces 
of  Tyranny,  in  all  periods  of  its  history — it  needs 
not,  it  needs  not,  that  I  should  find  the  coral  path- 
way of  the  sea  laid  bare,  and  its  waves  a  wall  upon 
the  right  hand  and  the  left,  and  the  crazed  chariot 
wheels  of  the  oppressor  floating  in  fragments  upon 
its  closing  floods,  to  feel,  to  realize,  that  higher  than 
6 


42 

human  was  the  Power  which  presided  over  the 
Exodus  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  ! 

Was  it  not  sometliing  more  than  tlie  ignorance  or 
the  self-will  of  an  earthly  and  visible  Pilot,  which, 
instead  of  conducting  them  to  the  spot  which  they 
had  deliberately  selected — the  very  spot  on  which 
we  are  now  assembled — the  banks  of  your  own 
beautiful  Hudson,  of  which  they  had  heard  so  much 
during  their  sojourn  in  Holland,  but  which  were 
then  swarming  with  a  host  of  horrible  savages — 
guided  them  to  a  coast,  which  though  bleaker  and 
far  less  hospitable  in  its  outward  as})ect,  had  yet  by 
an  extraordinary  epidemic,  but  a  short  time  previous, 
been  almost  completely  cleared  of  its  barbarous  ten- 
ants ?  Was  it  not  something  more,  also,  than  mere 
mortal  error  or  human  mistake,  which,  instead  of 
bringing  them  within  the  limits  prescribed  in  the 
patent  they  had  procured  in  England,  directed  them 
to  a  shore  on  which  they  were  to  land  upon  their 
own  responsibility  and  under  their  own  authority, 
and  thus  compelled  them  to  an  Act,  which  has  ren- 
dered Cape  Cod  more  memorable  than  Runnamede, 
and  the  Cabin  of  the  Mayflower  than  the  proudest 
Hall  of  ancient  Charter  or  modern  Constitution — the 
execution  of  the  first  written  original  Contract  of 
Democratic  Self-Government  which  is  found  in  the 
annals  of  the  World  ? 

But  the  Pilgrims,  I  have  said,  had  a  power  within 
them  also.  If  God  was  not  seen  among  them  in 
the  fire  of  a  Horeb,  or  the  earthquake  of  a  Sinai, 
or  the  wind   cleaving  asunder  the  waves  of  the  sea 


43 

they  were  to  cross,  He  was  with  tlicm,  at  least,  in 
the  still,  small  voice.  Conscience,  Conscience,  was 
the  nearest  to  an  earthly  power  which  the  Pilgrims 
possessed,  and  the  freedom  of  Conscience  the  nearest 
to  an  earthly  motive  which  prompted  their  career. 
It  was  Conscience,  which  '  weaned  them  from  the 
delicate  milk  of  their  Mother  country  and  inured 
them  to  the  difficulties  of  a  strange  land.'  It  was 
Conscience,  which  made  them  '  not  as  other  men, 
whom  small  things  could  discourage,  or  small  dis- 
contentments cause  to  wish  themselves  at  home 
again.'  It  was  Conscience — that  ^  robur  et  ces 
triplex  circa  pectus ' — which  emboldened  them  to 
launch  their  fragile  bark  upon  a  merciless  ocean, 
fearless  of  the  fighting  winds  and  lowering  storms. 
It  was  Conscience,  which  stiffened  them  to  brave 
the  perils,  endure  the  hardships,  undergo  the  depri- 
vations of  a  howling,  houseless,  hopeless  desolation. 
And  thus,  almost  in  the  very  age  when  the  Great 
Master  of  human  nature,  was  putting  into  the  mouth 
of  one  of  his  most  interesting  and  philosophical  char- 
acters, that  well  remembered  conclusion  of  a  cele- 
brated soliloquy — 

'  Thus  Conscience  does  make  coivards  of  us  all, 
And  thus  the  native  hue  of  resolutiou 
Is  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought, 
And  enterprises  of  great  pith  and  moment 
With  this  regard,  their  currents  turn  awry. 
And  lose  the  name  of  action — ' 

this  very  Conscience,  a  clog  and  an  obstacle  indeed, 
to  its  foes,  but  the  surest  strength  and  sharpest  spur 


44 

of  its  friends,  was  inspiring  a  courage,  confirming  a 
resolution,  and  accomplishing  an  enterprise,  of  which 
the  records  of  the  world  will  be  searched  in  vain  to 
find  a  parallel.  Let  it  never  be  forgotten,  that  it 
was  Conscience,  and  that,  not  entrenched  behind 
broad  seals,  but  enshrined  in  brave  souls,  which  car- 
ried through  and  completed  the  long  baffled  under- 
taking of  settling  the  New  England  coast. 

But  Conscience  did  more  than  this.  It  was  that 
same  still,  small  voice,  which,  under  God,  and 
through  the  instrumentality  of  the  Pilgrims,  pro- 
nounced the  verv  Fiat  of  light  in  the  creation  of 
civilized  society  on  this  whole  Northern  Continent 
of  America,  exerting  an  influence  in  the  process 
of  that  creation,  compared  with  which  all  previous 
influences  were  but  so  many  movings  on  the  face  of 
the  waters. 

Let  me  not  be  thought,  in  this  allusion  and  othei"s 
like  it  in  which  I  have  already  indulged,  to  slight 
the  claims  of  the  Virginia  Colony,  or  to  do  designed 
injustice  to  its  original  settlers.  There  are  laurels 
enough  growing  wild  upon  the  graves  of  Plymouth, 
without  tearing  a  leaf  from  those  of  Jamestown. 
New  England  does  not  require  to  have  other  parts 
of  the  country  cast  into  shade,  in  order  that  the 
brightness  of  her  own  early  days  may  be  seen  and 
admired.  Least  of  all,  would  any  son  of  New 
England  be  found  uttering  a  word  in  wanton  dis- 
paragement of  '  our  noble,  patriotic,  sister  Colony 
Virginia,'  as  she  was  once  justly  termed  by  the 
Patriots  of  Faneuil  Hall.     There  are  circumstances 


45 

of  peculiar  and  beautiful  correspondence  in  the 
careers  of  Virginia  and  New  England,  which  must 
ever  constitute  a  bond  of  sympathy,  affection  and 
pride  between  their  children.  Not  only  did  they 
form  respectively  the  great  Northern  and  Southern 
rallying-points  of  civilization  on  this  Continent — 
not  only  was  the  most  friendly  competition,  or  the 
most  cordial  cooperation,  as  circumstances  allowed, 
kept  up  between  them  during  their  early  colonial 
existence — but  who  forgets  the  generous  emulation, 
the  noble  rivalry  with  which  they  continually 
challenged  and  seconded  each  other  in  resisting 
the  first  beginnings  of  British  aggression,  in  the 
persons  of  their  James  Otises  and  Patrick  Henrys  ? 
Who  forgets,  that,  while  that  resistance  was  first 
brought  to  a  practical  test  in  New  England,  at 
Lexington  and  Concord  and  Bunker  Hill,  fortune, 
as  if  resolved  to  restore  the  balance  of  renown 
between  the  two,  reserved  for  the  Yorktown  of 
Virginia  the  last  crowning  victory  of  Independence  ? 
Who  forgets  that,  while  the  hand,  by  which  the 
original  Declaration  of  that  Independence  was 
drafted,  was  furnished  by  Virginia,  the  tongue  by 
which  the  adoption  of  that  Instrument  was  defended 
and  secured,  was  supplied  by  New  England — a  bond 
of  common  glory,  upon  which  not  death  alone 
seemed  to  set  his  seal,  but  Deity,  I  had  almost  said, 
to  affix  an  immortal  sanction,  when  the  spirits  by 
which  that  hand  and  tongue  were  moved,  were 
caught  up  together  to  the  clouds  on  the  same  great 
day  of  the  Nation's  Jubilee.     Nor  let   me  omit  to 


46 

allLulc  to  a  peculiar  distinction  which  belongs  to  Vir- 
ginia alone.  It  is  her  preeminent  honor  and  pride, 
that  the  name  which  the  whole  country  acknowl- 
edges as  that  of  a  Father,  she  can  claim  as  that  of  a 
Son — a  name  at  which  comparison  ceases — to  which 
there  is  nothing  similar,  nothing  second — a  name 
combining  in  its  associations  all  that  was  most  pure 
and  godly  in  the  nature  of  the  Pilgrims,  with  all  that 
was  most  brave  and  manly  in  the  character  of  the 
Patriots — a  name  above  every  name  in  the  annals 
of  human  liberty  ! 

But  I  cannot  refrain  from  adding,  that  not  more 
does  the  fame  of  Washington  surpass  that  of  every 
other  public  character  which  America  or  the  world 
at  large,  has  yet  produced,  than  the  New  England 
Colony,  in  its  origin  and  its  influences,  its  objects 
and  its  results,  excels  tliat  from  which  Washington 
"Was  destined  to  proceed. 

In  one  point,  indeed,  and  that,  it  is  true,  a  point 
of  no  inconsiderable  moment,  the  Colonies  of  James- 
town and  Plymouth  were  alike. — Both  were  colonies 
of  Englishme7i ; — and  in  running  down  the  history 
of  our  Country  from  its  first  colonization  to  the 
present  hour,  I  need  hardly  say  that  no  single 
circumstance  can  be  found,  which  has  exercised 
a  more  propitious  and  elevating  influence  upon  its 
fortunes,  than  the  English  origin  of  its  settlers. 
Not  to  take  up  time  in  discussing  either  the  abstract 
adaptation  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  character  to  the 
circumstances  of  a  New  Country,  or  its  relative 
capacity   for   the  establishment   and    enjoyment  of 


47 

Free  Institutions, — the  most  cursory  glance  at  tlie 
comparative  condition,  past  or  present,  of  those 
portions  of  the  New  World,  which  were  planted 
by  other  nations,  is  amply  sufficient  to  illustrate 
this  idea.  Indeed,  our  own  Continent  affords  an 
illustration  of  it,  impressed  upon  us  anew  by  recent 
events  in  the  Canadian  Colonies,  which  renders  any 
reference  to  the  other  entirely  superfluous.  The 
contrast  between  the  social,  moral  and  intellectual 
state  of  the  two  parts  of  North  America  which  were 
peopled  respectively  by  Englishmen  and  Frenchmen, 
has  been  often  alluded  to.  But  a  comparison  of 
their  political  conditions  exhibits  differences  still 
more  striking. 

Go  back  to  the  period  immediately  preceding  the 
Stamp  Act,  and  survey  the  circimistances  of  the 
two  portions  of  Country,  as  they  then  existed. 
Both  are  in  a  state  of  Colonial  dependence  on 
Great  Britain.  But  the  one  has  just  been  reduced 
to  that  state  by  force  of  arms.  Its  fields  and 
villages  have  just  been  the  scenes  of  the  pillage 
and  plunder  which  always  march  in  the  train  of 
conquest — the  allegiance  of  their  owners  has  been 
violently  transferred  to  new  masters  as  the  penalty 
of  defeat — and  to  keep  alive  the  more  certainly  the 
vindictive  feelings  which  belong  to  the  bosoms  of  a 
vanquished  people,  and  to  frustrate  the  more  entirely 
the  natural  influences  of  time  and  custom  in  healing 
up  the  w^ounds  which  such  a  subjugation  has  in- 
flicted, the  laws  of  their  conquerors  are  enacted  and 
administered  in  a  strange  tonsiue,  and  one  which 


48 

continuallv  reminds  them  that  the  yoke  under  which 
they  have  passed,  is  that  of  a  Nation  towards  wiiich 
thev  liave  an  hereditary  hatred. — The  People  of  the 
other  portion,  on  the  contrary,  owe  their  relation  to 
the  common  Sovereign  of  them  both,  to  nothing 
but  their  own  natural  and  voluntary  choice — feel 
towards  the  Nation  over  which  he  })resides  nothing 
but  the  attachment  and  veneration  of  children  towards 
the  parent  of  their  pride,  and  are  bound  to  it  by 
the  powerful  ties  of  a  common  history,  a  common 
language,  and  a  common  blood.  Tell  me,  now, 
which  of  the  two  will  soonest  grow  impatient  of 
its  colonial  restraint,  soonest  throw  off  its  foreign 
subordination,  and  soonest  assert  itself  free  and  in- 
dependent ? 

And  what  other  solution  can  any  one  suggest 
to  the  problem  presented  by  the  fact  as  it  exists 
— the  very  reverse  of  that  which  would  thus  have 
been  predicted — what  other  clue  can  any  one  offer 
to  the  mystery,  that  the  French  Colonies  should 
have  remained,  not  entirely  quietly,  indeed,  but 
with  only  occasional  returns  of  ineffectual  throes 
and  spasms,  up  to  this  very  hour,  in  a  political 
condition  which  every  thing  would  seem  to  have 
conspired  to  render  loathsome  and  abhorrent — while 
the  English  Colonies,  snapping  alike  every  link 
either  of  love  or  of  power,  breaking  every  bond 
both  of  affection  and  authority,  resolved  themselves 
into  an  Independent  Nation  half  a  century  ago, — 
what  other  explanation,  I  repeat,  can  any  one  give 
to  this  paradox    fulfilled,   than  that   which  springs 


49 

from  a  consideration  of  the  comparative  capacities  for 
self-improvement  and  self-government  of  the  Races 
by  which  they  were  planted  ?  A  common  history, 
a  common  language,  a  common  hlood,  were,  indeed, 
links  of  no  ordinary  strength,  between  the  Atlantic 
Colonies  and  the  Mother  Country.  But  that  language 
was  the  language  in  which  Milton  had  sung,  Pym 
pleaded,  and  Locke  reasoned — that  blood  was  the 
blood  which  Hampden  had  poured  out  on  the  plain 
of  Chalgrove,  and  in  which  Sidney  and  Russell 
had  weltered  on  the  block  of  Martyrdom — and  that 
history  had  been  the  history  of  toiling,  struggling, 
but  still-advancing  Liberty  for  a  thousand  years. 
Such  links  could  only  unite  the  free.  They  lost 
their  tenacity  in  a  moment,  when  attempted  to 
be  recast  on  the  forge  of  despotism  and  em- 
ployed in  the  service  of  oppression — nay,  the  brittle 
fraejments  into  which  they  were  broken  in  such 
a  process,  were  soon  moulded  and  tempered  and 
sharpened  into  the  very  blades  of  a  triumphant 
resistance.  What  more  effective  instruments,  what 
more  powerful  incitements,  did  our  Fathers  enjoy, 
in  their  revolutionary  struggle,  than  the  lessons 
afforded  them  in  the  language,  the  examples  held 
up  to  them  in  the  history,  the  principles,  opinions 
and  sensil)ilities  flowing  from  the  hearts  and  vibrating 
throuo;h  the  veins,  which  they  inherited  from  the 
very  Nation  against  which  they  were  contending ! — 
Yes,  let  us  not  omit,  even  on  this  day,  when  we 
commemorate  the  foundation  of  a  Colony  which 
dates  back  its  origin  to  British  bigotry  and  British 

7 


50 

persecution,  even  in  this  connection,  too,  when  we  are 
speaking  of  that  contest  for  Liberty  which  owed 
its  conjiiiencement  to  British  oppression  and  British 
despotism,  to  express  our  gratitude  to  God,  tliat 
old  England  was,  still,  our  Mother  Country,  and 
to  acknowledge  our  obligations  to  our  British 
Ancestors  for  the  glorious  capabilities  which  they 
bequeathed  us. 

But,  with  the  single  exception  that  both  emigrated 
from  England,  the  Colonies  of  Jamestown  and 
Plymouth  had  nothing  in  common,  and  to  all  out- 
ward appearances,  the  former  enjoyed  every  ad- 
vantage. The  two  Companies,  as  it  happened, 
though  so  long  an  interval  elapsed  between  their 
reaching  America,  left  their  native  land  within 
about  a  year  of  each  other ;  but  under  what  widely 
different  circumstances  did  they  embark !  The 
former  set  sail  from  the  port  of  the  Metropolis, 
in  a  squadron  of  three  vessels,  under  an  experienced 
Commander,  under  the  patronage  of  a  wealthy  and 
powerful  Corporation,  and  with  an  ample  patent 
from  the  Crown.  The  latter  betook  themselves 
to  their  solitary  bark,  by  stealth,  under  cover  of 
the  night,  and  from  a  bleak  and  desert  heath  in 
Lincolnshire,  while  a  band  of  armed  horsemen, 
rushing  down  upon  them  before  the  embarkation 
was  completed,  made  prisoners  of  all  who  were 
not  already  on  board,  and  condemned  husbands 
and  wives,  and  parents  and  children,  to  a  cruel  and 
almost  hopeless  separation. 

Nor  did  their  respective  arrivals  on  the  Ameri- 


51 

can  shores,  though  divided  bj  a  period  of  thirteen 
years,  present  a  less  signal  contrast.  The  Vir- 
ginia Colony  entered  the  harbor  of  Jamestown 
about  the  middle  of  May,  and  never  could  that 
lovely  Queen  of  Spring  have  seemed  lovelier, 
than  when  she  put  on  her  flowery  kirtle  and  her 
wreath  of  clusters,  to  welcome  those  admiring 
strangers  to  the  enjoyment  of  her  luxuriant  vegeta- 
tion. There  were  no  Mayflowers  for  the  Pilgrims, 
save  the  name,  written,  as  in  mockery,  on  the 
stern  of  their  treacherous  ship.  They  entered  the 
harbor  of  Plymouth  on  the  shortest  day  in  the  year, 
in  this  last  quarter  of  December, — and  when  could 
the  rigid  Winter-King  have  looked  more  repulsive, 
than  when,  shrouded  with  snow  and  crowned  with 
ice,  he  admitted  those  shivering  wanderers  within 
the  realms  of  his  dreary  domination  ? 

But  mark  the  sequel.  From  a  soil  teeming  with 
every  variety  of  production  for  food,  for  fragrance, 
for  beauty,  for  profit,  the  Jamestown  Colonists 
reaped  only  disappointment,  discord,  wretchedness. 
Having  failed  in  the  great  object  of  their  adventure 
— the  discovery  of  gold — they  soon  grew  weary  of 
their  condition,  and  within  three  years  after  their 
arrival  are  found  on  the  point  of  abandoning  the 
Country.  Indeed,  they  are  actually  embarked,  one 
and  all,  with  this  intent,  and  are  already  at  the 
mouth  of  the  River,  when,  falling  in  with  new 
hands  and  fresh  supplies  which  have  been  sent  to 
their  relief,  they  are  induced  to  return  once  more 
to  their  deserted  village. 


52 

But  even  up  to  the  very  year  in  which  the 
Pilgrims  landed,  ten  years  after  this  renewal  of 
their  designs,  they  '  had  hardly  become  settled  in 
their  minds,'  had  hardly  abandoned  the  purpose  of 
ultimately  returning  to  England,  and  their  condition 
may  be  illustrated  by  the  fact,  that  in  1619  and 
again  in  1621,  cargoes  of  young  women,  (a  com- 
modity of  which  there  was  scarcely  a  sample  in 
the  whole  plantation — and  would  to  God,  that  all 
the  traffic  in  human  flesh  on  the  Virginian  Coast 
even  at  this  early  period  had  been  as  innocent  in 
itself  and  as  beneficial  in  its  results !)  were  sent 
out  by  the  Corporation  in  London  and  sold  to  the 
planters  for  wives,  at  from  one  hundred  and  twenty 
to  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  of  tobacco  apiece! 

Nor  was  the  political  condition  of  the  Jamestown 
Colony  much  in  advance  of  its  social  state.  The 
Charter,  under  which  they  came  out,  contained  not 
a  single  element  of  popular  liberty,  and  secured  not 
a  single  right  or  franchise  to  those  who  lived  under 
it.  And,  though  a  gleam  of  freedom  seemed  to 
dawn  upon  them  in  1619,  when  they  instituted  a 
Colonial  Assembly  and  introduced  the  Representative 
System  for  the  first  time  into  the  New  World,  the 
precarious  character  of  their  popular  institutions  and 
the  slender  foundation  of  their  popular  liberties  at  a 
much  later  period,  even  as  far  down  as  1671,  may 
be  understood  from  that  extraordinary  declaration  of 
Sir  William  Berkeley,  then  Governor  of  Viririnia,  to 
the  Lords  Commissioners : — '  I  thank  God,  there 
are  no  free  schools  nor  printing — and   I   hope  we 


5S   . 

shall  not  have  these  hundred  }ears ; — for  learning 
has  brought  disobedience,  and  heresy  and  sects  into 
the  world ;  and  printing  has  divulged  them,  and 
libels  against  the  best  government.  God  keep  us 
from  both.' 

But  how  was  it  with  the  Pilgrims  ?  From  a  soil 
of  comparative  barrenness,  they  gathered  a  rich 
harvest  of  contentment,  harmcmy  and  happiness. 
Coming  to  it  for  no  purpose  of  commerce  or  ad- 
venture, they  found  all  that  they  sought — religious 
freedom — and  that  made  the  wilderness  to  them  like 
Eden,  and  the  desert  as  the  garden  of  the  Lord. — 
Of  quitting  it,  from  the  very  hour  of  their  arrival, 
thev  seem  never  once  to  have  entertained,  or  even 
conceived,  a  thought.  The  first  foot  that  leapt 
gently  but  fearlessly  on  Plymouth  Rock  was  a 
pledge  that  there  would  be  no  retreating — tradition 
tells  us,  that  it  was  the  foot  of  Mary  Chilton. 
They  have  brought  their  wives  and  their  little  ones 
with  them,  and  what  other  assurance  could  they 
give  that  they  have  come  to  their  home?  And 
accordingly  they  proceed  at  once  to  invest  it  with 
all  the  attributes  of  home,  and  to  make  it  a  free  and 
a  happy  home.  The  Compact  of  their  own  adoption 
under  which  they  landed,  remained  the  sole  guide  of 
their  government  for  nine  years,  and  though  it  was 
then  superseded  by  a  Charter  from  the  Corporation 
within  whose  limits  they  had  fallen,  it  was  a  Charter 
of  a  liberal  and  comprehensive  character,  and  tinder 
its  provisions  they  continued  to  lay  broad  and  deep 
the  foundations  of  Civil   Freedom.     The  trial  by 


54 

jury  was  established  by  the  Pilgrims  within  three 
years  after  their  arrival,  and  constitutes  the  appro- 
priate opening  to  the  first  chapter  of  their  legislation. 
The  education  of  their  children,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  one  of  their  main  motives  for  leaving  Holland, 
and  there  is  abundant  evidence  that  it  was  among 
the  earliest  subjects  of  their  attention — while  the 
planters  of  Massachusetts,  who  need  not  be  dis- 
tinguished from  the  planters  of  Plymouth  for  any 
purposes  of  this  comparison,  founded  the  College  at 
Cambridge  in  1636 — set  up  a  printing  press  at  the 
same  place  in  1639,  which  'divulged,'  in  its  first 
workings  at  least,  nothing  more  libellous  or  heretical 
than  a  Psalm-book  and  an  Almanac — and  as  early  as 
1647  had  instituted,  by  an  ever  memorable  Statute, 
that  noble  system  of  New  England  Free  Schools, 
which  constitutes  at  this  moment  the  best  security  of 
Liberty,  wherever  Liberty  exists,  and  its  best  hope, 
wherever  it  is  still  to  be  established. 

It  would  carry  me  far  beyond  the  allowable  limits 
of  this  Address,  if,  indeed,  I  have  not  already  ex- 
ceeded them,  to  contrast  in  detail,  the  respective 
influences  upon  our  Country  and,  through  it,  upon 
the  world,  of  these  two  original  Colonies.  The 
elements  for  such  a  contrast  I  have  already  sug- 
gested, and  I  shall  content  myself  with  only  adding 
further  upon  this  point,  the  recent  and  very  re- 
markable testimony  of  two  most  intelligent  French 
travellers,  whose  writings  upon  the  United  States 
have  justly  received  such  distinguished  notice  on 
both  sides  the  Atlantic. 


55 

*  I  have  already  observed,'  says  De  Tocqueville, 
that  '  the  origin  of  the  American  settlements  may  be 
looked  upon  as  the  first  and  most  efficacious  cause,  to 
which  the  present  prosperity  of  the  United  States  may 
be  attributed.  *  *  *  When  I  reflect  upon  the  con- 
sequences of  this  primary  circumstance,  methinks, 
I  see  the  destiny  of  America  embodied  in  the  first 
Puritan  who  landed  on  these  shores,  just  as  the 
human  race  was  represented  by  the  first  man.' 

'  If  we  wished,'  says  Chevalier,  '  to  form  a  single 
type,  representing  the  American  character  of  the 
present  moment  as  a  single  whole,  it  would  be 
necessary  to  take  at  least  three-fourths  of  the 
Yankee  race  and  to  mix  it  with  hardly  one-fourth 
of  the  Virginian.' 

But  the  Virginia  type  was  not  complete  when  it 
first  appeared  on  the  coast  of  Jamestown,  and  I 
must  not  omit,  before  bringing  these  remarks  to  a 
conclusion,  to  allude  to  one  other  element  of  any 
just  comparison  between  the  two  Colonies. — The 
year  1620  was  unquestionably  the  great  Epoch  of 
American  Destinies.  Within  its  latter  half  were 
included  the  two  events  which  have  exercised  in- 
comparably the  most  controlling  influence  on  the 
character  and  fortunes  of  our  Country.  At  the  very 
time  the  Mayflower,  with  its  precious  burden,  was 
engaged  in  its  perilous  voyage  to  Plymouth,  another 
ship,  far  otherwise  laden,  was  approaching  the  harbor 
of  Virginia.  It  was  a  Dutch  man-of-war,  and  its 
cargo  consisted  in  part  of  twenty  slaves,  which  were 
subjected  to  sale  on  their  arrival,  and  with  which  the 


56 

foundations  of  domestic  slavery  in  North  America 
were  laid. 

I  sec  those  two  fate-freighted  vessels,  laboring 
under  the  divided  destinies  of  the  same  Nation,  and 
striving  against  the  billows  of  the  same  sea,  like  the 
principles  of  good  and  evil  advancing  side  by  side  on 
the  same  great  ocean  of  human  life.  I  hear  from 
the  one  the  sighs  of  wretchedness,  the  groans  of 
despair,  the  curses  and  clankings  of  struggling  cap- 
tivity, sounding  and  swelling  on  the  same  gale, 
which  bears  only  from  the  other  the  pleasant  voices 
of  prayer  and  praise,  the  cheerful  melody  of  content- 
ment and  happiness,  the  glad,  the  glorious  'anthem 
of  the  free.'  Oh,  could  some  angel  arm,  like  that 
which  seems  to  guide  and  guard  the  Pilgrim  bark, 
be  now  interposed  to  arrest,  avert,  dash  down  and 
overwhelm  its  accursed  compeer!  But  it  may  not 
be.  They  have  both  reached  in  safety  the  place  of 
their  destination.  Freedom  and  Slavery,  in  one  and 
the  same  year,  have  landed  on  these  American  shores. 
And  American  Liberty,  like  the  Victor  of  ancient 
Rome,  is  doomed,  let  us  hope  not  for  ever,  to  endure 
the  presence  of  a  fettered  captive  as  a  companion  in 
her  Car  of  Triumph  ! 

Gentlemen  of  the  New  England  Society  in  the 
City  of  New  York — I  must  detain  you  no  longer. 
In  preparing  to  discharge  the  duty,  which  you  have 
done  me  the  unmerited  honor  to  assign  me  in  the 
celebration  of  this  hallowed  Anniversary,  I  was  more 
than  once  tempted   to   quit  the  narrow  track  of  re- 


57 

mark  wliicli   I    have   now   pursued,   and  indulo^e   in 
speculations  or  discussions  of  a  more  immediate  and 
general  interest.     But  it  seemed  to  me,  that  if  there 
was  any  day  in  the  year  which  belonged  of  right  to  the 
past  and  the  dead,  this  was  that  day,  and  to  the  })ast 
and  the  dead  I  resolved  to  devote  my  exclusive  atten- 
tion.    But  though  I  have  fulfilled  that  resolution,  as 
you  will  bear  me  witness,  with  undeviating  fidelity, 
many  of  the  topics  which  I   had  proposed  to  mvself 
seem   hardly  to   have   been  entered   U[)on — some  of 
them  scarcely  approached.     The  principles  of  the 
Pilgrims,  the   virtues  of  the  Pilgrims,  the  ftiults  of 
the  Pilgrims — alas  I   there   are   enough  always  ready 
to  make  the  most  of  these — the  personal  characters 
of  their  brave  and  })ious  leaders,  Bradford,  Brewster, 
Carver,  Winslow,  Alden,  Allerton,  Standish, — the  day 
shall  not  pass  away  without  their  names  being  once  at 
least  audibly  and  honorably  pronounced — the  gradual 
rise  and  progress  of  the  Colony  they  planted,  and  of 
the  old  Commonwealth  with  which  it  was  early  in- 
corporated, the  origin  and  growth  of  the  other  Colo- 
nies, Rhode   Island,  Connecticut,  New  Hampshire 
and  the  rest,  which  were  afterwards  included  within 
the  limits  of  New  England,  and  many  of  the  sons  of 
all  of  which  are  doubtless  present  here  this  day — the 
history  of  New  England  as  a  whole,  its  great  deeds 
and   great   men,  its  schools  and  scholars,  its  heroes 
and  battle-fields,  its  ingenuity  and  industry,  its  soil, 
— hard  and  stony,  indeed,  but  of  inestimable  richness 
in  repelling  from  its  culture  the  idle,  the  ignorant  and 
the  enslaved,  and  developing  the  energies  of  free,  in- 


58 

telligent,  independent  labor — the  influences  of  New 
England  abroad  as  well  as  at  home,  its  emigration, 
ever  onward,  with  the  axe  in  one  hand  and  the  Bible 
in  the  other,  clearing  out  the  wild  growth  of  buckeye 
and  hickory,  and  planting  the  trees  of  knowledge  and 
of  life,  driving  the  buffalo  from  forest  to  lake,  from 
lake  to  prairie,  and  from  prairie  to  the  sea,  till  the  very 
memory  of  its  existence  would  seem  likely  to  be 
lost,  but  for  the  noble  City,  which  its  pursuers, 
pausing  for  an  instant  on  their  track,  have  called  by 
its  name,  and  founded  on  its  favorite  haunt — these 
and  a  hundred  other  themes  of  interesting  and  ap- 
propriate discussion,  have,  I  am  sensible,  been  quite 
omitted.  But  I  have  already  exhausted  your 
patience,  or  certainly  my  own  strength,  and  I  hasten 
to  relieve  them  both. 

It  has  been  suggested.  Gentlemen,  by  one  of  the 
French  Travellers,  whose  opinions  I  have  just  cited, 
that,  though  the  Yankee  has  set  his  mark  on  the 
United  States  during  the  last  half  century,  and 
though  '  he  still  rules  the  Nation,'  that  yet,  the 
physical  labor  of  civilization  is  now  nearly  brought 
to  an  end,  the  physical  basis  of  society  entirely  laid, 
and  that  other  influences  are  soon  about  to  predomi- 
nate in  rearing  up  the  social  superstructure  of  our 
Nation.  I  hail  the  existence  of  this  Association, 
and  of  others  like  it  in  all  parts  of  the  Union,  bound 
together  by  the  noble  cords  of  '  friendship,  charity 
and  mutual  assistance,'  as  a  pledge  that  New  Eng- 
land principles,  whether  in  ascendancy  or  under  de- 
pression in  the  Nation   at  large,  will  never  stand  in 


^^r 


59 

need  of  warm  hearts  and  bold  tongues  to  cherish 
and  vindicate  them.  But,  at  any  rate,  let  us  rejoice 
that  they  have  so  long  pervaded  the  country  and 
prevailed  in  her  institutions.  Let  us  rejoice  that 
the  basis  of  her  society  has  been  laid  by  Yankee 
arms.  Let  us  rejoice  that  the  corner-stone  of  our 
Republican  edifice  was  hewn  out  from  the  old,  origi- 
nal, primitive,  Plymouth  quarry.  In  what  remains 
to  be  done,  either  in  finishing  or  in  ornamenting  that 
edifice,  softer  and  more  pliable  materials  may,  per- 
haps, be  preferred — the  New  England  granite  may 
be  thought  too  roug-h  and  unwieldv — the  architects 
may  condemn  it — the  builders  may  reject  it — but 
still,  still,  it  will  remain  the  deep  and  enduring 
foundation,  not  to  be  removed  without  undermining 
the  whole  fabric.  And  should  that  fabric  be  destined 
to  stand,  even  when  bad  government  shall  descend 
upon  it  like  the  rains,  and  corruption  come  round  about 
it  like  the  floods,  and  faction,  discord,  disunion,  and 
anarchy  blow  and  beat  upon  it  like  the  winds, — as 
God  grant  it  may  stand  forever  ! — it  will  still  owe 
its  stability  to  no  more  effective  earthly  influence, 

than,  THAT  IT  WAS  FOUNDED  ON  PiLGRIM  RoCK. 


60 


NOTES 


Pages  15  and  16. — In  this  description,  and  in  some  other  of  the  narrative  portions  of  the 
Address,  I  have  employed  phrases  and  paragraphs  gleaned  here  and  there  from  the  writings 
of  Prince,  Morton,  and  others,  without  deeming  it  necessary  to  disfigure  the  pages  by  too 
frequent  a  use  of  the  inverted  commas.  I  might  cite  abundant  authority  for  such  a 
liberty. 


P.  28. — For  the  opportunity  of  perusing  this  Dialogue,  I  am  indebted  to  Rev.  Alexander 
Young,  by  whom  it  was  copied  from  the  Plymouth  Church  Records.  I  am  happy  to  be  able 
to  add,  that  Mr.  Young  is  engaged  in  preparing  for  the  press,  a  volume  to  ho  entitled  '  The 
Old  Chronicles  of  the  Plymouth  Colony,  collected  partly  from  original  records  and  unpub- 
lished manuscripts,  and  partly  from  scarce  tracts,  hitherto  unknown  in  this  Country,'  in 
which  this  Dialogue  will  be  contained,  and  which  will  be,  in  fact,  a  history  of  the  Plymouth 
People,  written  by  themselves,  from  1602  to  1624.  Mr.  Young  confidently  expects  to  be  able 
to  recover  or  restore  the  most  valuable  portion  of  Gov.  Bradford's  History,  which  was  used 
by  Prince  and  Hutchinson,  but  which  disappeared  during  the  War  of  the  Revolution,  and 
has  been  supposed  to  be  irrecoverably  lost. 


P.  38. — Von  MUller,  in  his  Universal  History,  speaks  of  '  the  monument  apparently  PuniCf 
which  was  found  some  years  ago  in  the  forests  behind  Boston,'  and  adds,  '  it  is  possible  that 
some  Tyrians  or  Carthaginians,  thrown  by  storms  upon  unknown  coasts,  uncertain  if  ever 
the  same  tracts  might  bo  again  discovered,  chose  to  leave  this  monument  of  their  adventures.' 
He  refers,  without  doubt,  to  the  same  Rock  at  Dighton,  which  the  Society  of  Northern  Anti- 
quaries in  Denmark  claim  as  conclusive  evidence  of  the  discovery  of  America  by  the  Scan- 
dinavians. 


P.  53. — The  distinction  of  being  the  first  person  that  set  foot  on  Plymouth  Rock  has  been 
claimed  for  others  beside  Mary  Chilton,  and  particularly  for  John  ^Iden.  Hut  I  could  not 
resist  the  remark  of  Judge  Davis  on  this  point,  in  one  of  his  notes  to  Morton's  iMemorial. 
After  quoting  the  language  of  another,  that  '  for  the  i)urposes  of  the  arts  a  female  figure, 
typical  of  faith,  hope,  and  charity,  is  well  adapted,' — he  observes,  that  '  as  there  is  a  great 
degree  of  uncertainty  on  this  subject,  it  is  not  only  grateful,  but  nllowablo,  to  indulge  the 
imagination,  and  wc  may  expect  from  the  friends  of  John  Alden,  that  they  should  give  place 
to  the  lady.' 


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